Everyone,
The Ontario Invasive Plant Council has put me on a working group to
consider whether Burdocks (Arctium minus & A. lappa) are invasive
species, and if so how they might be controlled.
Over recent decades, I've had the impression that Burdocks are of
reduced abundance in eastern Ontario, and my suspicion is that the Best
Management Practices document would read - "Stand back and let the
Turkeys do the job." Here's the first google hit on Turkeys interacting
with Burdock -
https://naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com/2021/03/08/wild-turkeys-feeding-and-making-burdock-balls/
-
This relationship would be hard to study, since it would require
locating stands of Burdock, and then looking for Turkey predation on the
burrs, which would be easy in the winter, but harder in the fall when
there's no snow to record tracks and make the "burdock balls"
conspicuous, and then follow-up to see if the turkeyed stands diminish
over the next few years.
I wonder what others experience with this relationship, or of abundance
of Burdock through the years, may be?
fred.
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Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Fragile Inheritance Natural History -
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