Treated or Untreated Oriental Bittersweet Vine Management Cut-Stumping

Summary: Oriental bittersweet vine management suggests mowing small, young vines, treated cut-stumping large, old, sunny vines and untreated cut-stumping in shade.

extensive fruiting infestation of oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) in dead tree, Dec. 28, 2013: Richard Rowley/Glastonbury Partners in Planting/Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images

Shade and stem diameter allow hazard tree workers and utility right-of-way arborists to accomplish oriental bittersweet vine management without herbicides, according to an article in Arboriculture & Urban Forestry for July 2016.

The article Large Oriental Bittersweet Vines Can Be Killed By Cutting Alone: Implications for Utility Arboriculture and Other Hazard Tree Work broaches second-year, 90-plus percent mortalities. Christopher Nowak of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) calculates similar results for cut-stumping with herbicides and for vine-cutting.

Oriental bittersweet damages canopies and stems with girdling twiners that decrease life expectancies and light levels, disrupt forest regeneration and succession and disseminate breakage and collapse. Its extermination typically entails cut-stumping and weed-killing to eliminate woody plants subsequently engineering root suckers and stump sprouts as forms of vegetative reproduction from adventitious buds.

Roadside rights-of-way near Lake George village furnish 40-year-old white pines applications of glyphosate-active Accord in mid-October 2011, for measurements in June 2012 and in October 2013.

The Eastern Broadleaf Forest Province and Hot Continental Division's Hudson Valley Section gathers Hyde Park's 40- to 80-year-old black locust, red oak, sugar maple and tree-of-heaven. The study also has 40- to 80-year-old black cherry, flowering dogwood, green ash and red oak for two treatment plots near East Fishkill and Stony Point. The application schedule is the same for East Fishkill, Lake George and Stony Point whereas part of Hyde Park incurs late-June, mid-August and mid-October 2011 treatments.

All oriental bittersweet vine management study plots juggle 32.81-foot (10-meter) lengths and widths into forests except for the 98.42-foot (30-meter) width in part of Hyde Park.

Each oriental bittersweet vine management study plot keeps 9.83-foot (3-meter) untreated buffer zones and 10 vines 0.51-plus inch (1.3-plus centimeters) in diameter per 1,076.39-square-foot (100-square-meter) area.

East Fishkill, Hyde Park, Lake George and Stony Point load averages of 2,222 vines averaging 18 years old and 1.1-inch (2.8-centimeter) diameters per 2.47 acres (hectare). Hyde Park's Study 2 plot maintains averages of 2,330 vines averaging 22 years in age and 0.98 inch (2.5 centimeters) in diameter per 2.47 acres (hectare). Study plots 1 and 2 neglect vines under 0.51 inch (1.3 centimeters) in diameter that respectively number averages of 26,334 and 19,660 per 2.47 acres (hectare).

Hand saws obtain horizontal surfaces 5.91 to 17.72 inches (15 to 45 centimeters) above ground-lines, for herbicide applications on 240, and no treatments on 120, vines.

June-, August-, October-treated cut-stumps and untreated cut-stumps present 87, 69, 62 and 44 percent mortalities June 2012 and 99, 95, 98 and 92 percent October 2013.

Sprout lengths and per-acre totals quantify at 18.5, 15.75, 12.2 and 21.65 inches (47, 40, 31 and 55 centimeters) and at 0.4, 2.5, 3 and 3.1. Eight untreated and nine treated oriental bittersweet vine management study cut-stumps retain sprouts in 2013, perhaps from absence of herbivores and presence of root-stored carbohydrate reserves. Early-season treatments and treated cut-stumps significantly surpass first-year, not second-year, late-season treatments and untreated cut-stumping, perhaps due to photosynthesis-unfriendly forest edge-situated seedling, sprout and sucker stages.

Oriental bittersweet vine management tethers small-diameter, young vine control to mowing and large-diameter, older vine control to treated cut-stumping in sun and untreated cut-stumping in shade.

foliage and stems of strongly competitive oriental bittersweet vine (Celastrus orbiculatus): Leslie J. Mehrhoff/University of Connecticut/Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to:
talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet;
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for superior on-campus and on-line resources.

Image credits:

extensive fruiting infestation of oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) in dead tree, Dec. 28, 2013: Richard Rowley/Glastonbury Partners in Planting/Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images @ https://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5507738

foliage and stems of strongly competitive oriental bittersweet vine (Celastrus orbiculatus): Leslie J. Mehrhoff/University of Connecticut/Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images @ https://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5487261

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