FARMINGTON — Living next to a cemetery isn’t a great place to be unless you happen to be an invasive plants and trees educator like Patty Cormier.

Her yard beside Riverside Cemetery on Route 2 in Farmington is a veritable Pandora’s box of invasive plants and trees. Birds and the prior owner of their property, along with people who unwittingly planted invasives at their loved ones’ graves or left wreaths made with the seed-carrying berries of invasive plants, have doomed their yard’s native plants and trees.

“There’s about 2,100 plant species in Maine, and about a third of those are nonnative, and then a small portion of those are invasive,” said Cormier, one of eight district foresters with the Maine Forest Service. Her district is Franklin and Somerset counties.

Invasive plants, whether or not they pose a danger, can crowd out native species and some, such as bittersweet, send out vines that strangle and destroy native trees.

Of those invasives, her yard has Asiatic bittersweet, an autumn olive, a burning bush, Japanese honeysuckle, and new this spring, a Japanese barberry plant.

Down through the woods behind their yard and along the Sandy River are dangerous giant hogweed invasive plants, mixed in with the non-dangerous native cow parsnip plants they resemble. Contact with sap from giant hogweed followed by sun exposure can cause third-degree burns, Cormier said.

“The actual definition of ‘invasive’ is if it does environmental harm, economic harm and harm to human health, then that’s what makes it invasive,” Cormier said.

“Look at dandelions,” she said. “Depending on what you think, some would say they’re invasive, but they’re a native. Look at the lupines in Bar Harbor. If you’re an invasive, it pays to be pretty and that’s what it comes down to.”

Invasives have no natural predators and they adapt much better than native species, she said.

“One identification feature of many of the plants is to look in the spring,” she said. “They’re the first ones out, so that’s an advantage. They occupy the site, and then they’re the last (plant) with their leaves on in the fall.”

The Cormiers have lost four to five feet of their lawn to bittersweet that is quickly gobbling up an oak, an ash, a poplar and a cherry tree. Bittersweet vines are killing a young sumac by strangling its trunk.

The poplar tree was bent way over, its top nearly touching the lawn from the weight of the bittersweet vines choking its trunk and branches.

“We’re right next to the graveyard,” Cormier said. “Therefore, we get everything. It’s very helpful when I do workshops, too, because I can get samples from right out here in my backyard.

“Bittersweet, it’s got a very pretty red berry. People use it for wreaths all the time. So people bring the wreaths home, it warms up, the berries fall off, or they throw it outside on the compost pile — and now you’ve started bittersweet in your yard.”

Most invasive plants and trees thrive on soil disturbance, such as a property owner harvesting timber.

Bittersweet vines can be aged like trees by cutting the trunk and counting the rings, she said. While working at a woodlot, she cut a bittersweet vine and counted the rings. It was 35 years old.

“And guess when the last (timber) harvest there was — 35 years ago,” Cormier said.

Clifford Woods, a land trust property located near downtown Farmington, is overrun with bittersweet, Cormier said.

Last summer, Cormier and her husband waged war on the rapidly growing, aggressive bittersweet vines that are overtaking their hedge of trees and shrubs that separates their yard from the cemetery.

“We cut a lot of this last summer and it’s still here,” she said.

So Cormier is taking that war to a new level. She strews the young bittersweet plants she uproots across the limbs of a tree in full view of the remaining bittersweet as a not-so-subtle message.

“You’re supposed to pull it and hang it in a tree to warn the remaining bittersweet,” she said, doing just that with about a foot-long bittersweet that sprouted this month.

Cormier next identified a huge growth on the side of her house fronting Route 2 as a burning bush plant. It was flanked by two azalea bushes, one of which was being crowded out by the invasive. The burning bush was also blocking sunlight to a small oak tree and a small maple tree under the oak.

“It turns that bright red in the fall; that’s why people plant it and, of course, why nurseries sell it,” she said of the burning bush.

“And the birds love the berries. Therefore, (the seeds) get spread. So it’s a matter of seeing it and saying, ‘I don’t want to plant that.’ It’s not invasive right here. I mean, it’s not taking anything over, but I’m certainly adding to the problem because of the birds.”

Nurseries sell a lot of invasive plants and trees in Maine, Cormier said.

“You can find Norway maples in nurseries,” she said. “In Maine, they’re considered an invasive species, but they’re more in check in Maine, whereas if you go to southern New England, they’re just taking over.”

Norway maple grows fast and tall, creating a canopy of dense shade that blocks sunlight that native plants need, preventing regeneration. It also crowds out and kills native trees, such as sugar maples.

Forester Jeff Williams of Hollis said Norway maples will replace other trees and colonize the landscape.

“The problem with Norway maple is they start seeding into the woods,” Williams said.

Distinguishing them from sugar maples is easy once you know how, he said.

“If you don’t stare at trees all day like I do, you won’t notice the difference between Norway maples and sugar maple trees,” he said. “One way to tell them apart is when you pull a leaf off, look at the stem or petiole. Instead of secreting a clear sap like sugar maples, Norway maples will have a milky sap.

“A lot of people like the value of them,” he said. “The city of Portland planted a ton of them until someone raised an issue that they’re invasive.”

“In Maine, you just don’t see them doing well in the forest,” Cormier said. “But honeysuckle, barberry and bittersweet — they will take over a forest up here.”

Williams, a licensed herbicide applicator, said he has been dealing with honeysuckle issues in Pownal and North Yarmouth that are hindering timber harvests.

Seeds of invasive plants and trees are also spread by brooks and streams.

“It’s a free ride,” Cormier said. That’s how the giant hogweed settled along Sandy River.

Invasive plants like Japanese knotweed are also heading toward Rangeley, which amazes Cormier. She said she sees a lot of it in ditches.

“Every summer, when I drive up there, I see that it’s progressed. It’s kind of funny, too, because I did an invasive plants workshop at the Wilhelm Reich Museum up there last summer, and the only invasive we could find was one they planted.”

She pointed to the autumn olive invasive tree behind an outdoor grill.

“The U.S. government’s soil and conservation districts used to sell those for erosion control,” Cormier said. “I know, we’re our own worst enemy. So they don’t do that anymore. But they’re pretty, too. Again, they have pretty berries and the birds love them.”

Most of the invasive plants in the Cormiers’ yard were planted by the property’s former owner “because they liked them and I just hate to get rid of them, too,” she said, laughing. “See? Isn’t that awful?”

Cormier said people buying plants from nurseries should ask employees what they’re getting, to ensure that they don’t buy invasive plants that spread and crowd out and kill native species.

“I always get asked by people that have a Norway maple in their yard, ‘So what’s the harm? What’s the problem here?'” she said. “Again, it is all relative. If you love it there, then get it for you. But you are spreading them — even if it’s in your yard and it doesn’t appear that it’s spreading. It’s taking over.”

One variant of Norway maple is the Crimson King maple, which has maroon and purple leaves and is planted as an ornamental. It’s also an invasive, and there are two of them outside Farmington’s Municipal Building.

Early detection and eradication is key to getting rid of invasive plants and trees, Cormier said.

“If we can keep the invasive insects out and try to control some of these (invasive plants and trees), we’ll be doing good,” she said.

However, due to the adaptive nature of invasives, she said, once people start uprooting invasives, they can’t stop.

“It’s kind of a depressing thought,” Cormier said. “You’re not going to get rid of it if you pull it and stop. You’ve got to keep doing it.”

That’s because the plants grow and spread underground, too, along the root system.

“So you would have to get every minuscule piece of root in the ground,” she said.

In Asia, bittersweet is controlled there, so it doesn’t become the problem that it is in New England.

“For whatever reason, it has predators there, but for here, you get into the whole Pandora’s box for bringing a predator over, so you have to be careful with that,” Cormier said.

In Maine, people are the only predator of invasive plants and trees.

“It’s a big problem,” Cormier said. “It is sad. We’re lucky in this area that it’s not a huge problem, but, you know, if we don’t educate folks to look for it, it will be a big problem.”

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

For a list and fact sheets of invasive plants and trees in Maine, visit the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry website at www.maine.gov/dacf/mnap/features/invasive_plants/invsheets.htm.

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