The Bright Red Warning of Barberry

“A long time ago, the owner of that cornfield asked if I would sell this little piece of relatively flat woods to him,” my dad told me while walking me through a section of my parents’ land in Northeast Iowa. “He talked about cutting the trees and growing more corn.” As I looked out through the furrowed trunks of white oak, hackberry, chinkapin oak, walnut, basswood, and sugar maple to the monoculture of the field beyond, I was glad Dad had said no.

We’d just scrambled down the steep slope of our North Ridge. Looking back uphill, blocky outcrops of limestone nosed through a thick layer of autumn leaves. As part of the Driftless Area, this land has been shaped by flowing water instead of ice. The Turkey River—a tributary of the mighty Mississippi—had carved this ridge in one of its meanders through its floodplain. From the top of the North Ridge, we’d been able to look almost straight down at the channel carving the other side, too.

My dad, Larry Stone, looks from our North Ridge down to the Turkey River in NE Iowa. Photo by Emily Stone.

We sat down on a fallen log for a moment. Dad adjusted the cloth “tick gaiters” treated with Permethrin that he always wears out hiking these days. Iowa has plenty of deer and deer ticks, and multiple encounters with Lyme disease have made him cautious. The gaiters work on the same idea as tucking your pants into your socks to keep ticks from crawling into hard-to-see places. The addition of Permethrin means that the ticks aren’t just detoured, they die.

The pause also gave Dad a chance to snap a few photos of the late afternoon sun streaming through the trees. As I followed his gaze, a low bush with pinkish leaves off in the distance caught the light in a way that nothing else in the forest did. Hmm.

Japanese barberry bushes keep their rosy, red fall colors for a long time and are easy to spot in the November woods. Photo by Emily Stone.

The closer we ambled to this bush, the more sure I became of their ID. Finally, a close look revealed a few bright red, football-shaped berries dangling from rosettes of small, pink leaves. My hunch was confirmed. This was a Japanese barberry.

The bright red berries of Japanese barberry are one of the reasons this plant was favored as a decorative addition to landscaping until they began escaping gardens and becoming a haven for deer ticks and Lyme disease. Photo by Emily Stone.

The arching stems, decorative berries, and warmly hued, persistent fall foliage of barberry, plus the complete lack of deer browse on their twigs, are why they were brought to the U.S. as an ornamental plant in 1875. That was fine, until in the 1980s they started to spread out and displace native plants. Now Japanese barberry is considered invasive in 17 states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.

Barberry changes the soil characteristics beneath the shrub in ways that make it hard for other plants to grow there. Combine that with early spring leaf-out that shades out competitors, arching stems that root wherever they touch the ground, and drought resistance, and a forest can easily be taken over by an impenetrable thicket that not even deer will eat. A barberry thicket also provides a safe, fox-resistant haven for mice, and a shady, humid home for ticks. Deer ticks feed on mice, who are reservoirs for Lyme disease.

The arching stems of barberry root wherever they touch the ground. Photo by Emily Stone. 

 

One study in Connecticut found that in an area with no barberry, about 10 ticks per acre were infected with Lyme disease. In an area with extensive barberry, that number rose to 120 infected ticks per acre. That’s not a future my parents want on their land.

Dad pulled a roll of pink flagging tape from his pocket, and marked both the bush and several trees in the area. Early the next morning, he returned to the spot with clippers and herbicide. Cutting the stems and brushing on herbicide is one of the recommended control techniques. Our family doesn’t love using herbicides, but if they are applied responsibly, they can be more effective than mechanical removal alone.

On a few hilltops where my parents have restored prairies, they use fire to keep the native plants healthy and the invasive species out. Historically, low-intensity fires might have kept this woodland healthy, too. In the absence of widespread fire, some folks have found good success at removing barberry by blasting them with the focused fire of a propane torch.

I was happy that we’d found and taken care of this one barberry bush before it spread too far and impacted the diversity and tick population of this lovely forest. November is a good time to get outside and spot the the bright red warning of barberry when everything else is gray. On the way back to the house the only other flash of red I spotted was a cardinal heading toward the bird feeders. That’s a bit of color I’m excited to see.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 is available for pre-order from Honest Dog Books!

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.