Scorn of Buckthorn

I hate buckthorn, it is not the plant for me
Merely a shrub but thinks it's a tree
Roots as long as the trunk is tall
Spreads early spring to late in fall
Spiky thorns pierce gloves and shoes
No buckthorn I would never choose

It's non-native, it's invasive
It kills the spring ephemeral
It is glossy, it is spiky
It is a hardened criminal

I hate buckthorn, it is not the plant for me
You pull out one and it grows three
It does not heed your swears or pleas
It laughs at Roundup on its leaves
It will not die so you can’t mourn
Oh buckthorn I can only scorn

It's non-native, it's invasive
It kills the spring ephemeral
It is glossy, it is spiky
It is a hardened criminal

Over the last seven years I've been removing invasive buckthorn (both common (Rhamnus cathartica) and glossy (Rhamnus frangula)) from the two edges of my backyard that border a natural area. Buckthorn is really invasive because it has a longer growing season than other shrubs so it has longer to grow, it grows really quickly and thrives in suboptimal conditions, and it spreads both by roots (which one never manages to get all of) and seedlings from the many, many berries it produces and which are spread by birds. These removal exercises always leave me swearing, sweating, scratched, and exhausted. But they also led me to create the song above. It has an appropriately gloomy melody and is sung in a low, over-dramatic voice. (Someday, you may even get to hear it!)

There's a walking path just the other side of my property so when I've previously removed buckthorn, I cut and bagged maybe half of it and left the other half laying in rows like a hedge along my property. Well, I wanted to cut more buckthorn so I could plant some other shrubs in that area, rather than fighting with the same buckthorn seedlings each spring.

So my friend Carole and I pulled out all the dead branches that had accumlated over the years and cut them into smaller pieces to fit into yard waste bags. It was enough to fill the seven bags shown here, plus one out front and one bundle of thick branches. Plus about four more bundles, that have yet to be cut to size. Plus two bags that went last week. Whew!

After clearing out the mess, I made another mess. I used Ziggy, my trusty chainsaw (as shown in my avatar!) to clear out a bunch more buckthorn. Look at all this crap!

A lot of the branches are 12-15 feet long!

I have to deal with cutting these to size in the next week or so. My chainsaw chain came off the blade and I have to fix that first.

The first photo is salt on the cut. Many of the smaller trees were pulled at the roots and others were chainsawed closer to the ground. I cut a few off at about three feet and will thread a few dead branches through the stumps to make a sort of very low fence, or at least a property delineation. I usually paint concentrated Roundup (not diluted) onto the stumps with a sponge craft brush, but the guy who cut down a huge tree at my mom's told her to use salt to keep the tree from resprouting. It's cheaper so I'm giving it a go.

I really, really hate buckthorn.