It’s a sturdy beauty with feathery gray-purple plumes resembling that of the pampas grass, sometimes growing as high as 20 feet. It also quickly spreads a dense cover around wetlands.
Phragmites australis or common reed, is a wetland plant species abundant particularly in the eastern states along the Atlantic Coast and increasingly across much of the Midwest and in parts of the Pacific Northwest. Photo: EPA
So the phragmites must be good for wetland protection and splendor, right?
Not. It is among the most unwanted non-native species affecting shorelines and roadside ditches in Ohio, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
And the aggressive perennial grass is replacing hundreds of acres of native plants and animals in shorelines throughout the Midwest
It blocks shoreline views, limits access to beaches and hinders hunting. Great Lakes shoreline and wildlife experts want it stamped out.
Among them is the Lake Erie Cooperative Weed Management Area, a coalition of Ohio DNR, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the Nature Conservancy, which has been trying to do so for the past threeyears.
Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition recently awarded the organization $10,000 to poison and burn the plant on approximately 2,000 acres of wetlands in western Lake Erie.
The money will be administered by the Winous Point Marsh Conservancy, a non-profit organization that maintains Ohio’s largest privately owned wetlands.
“We realize that the issue of phragmites is becoming a concern around Lake Erie and it’s disrupting native habitats especially fish and waterfowl and it’s time to put more efforts to control it before it completely wipes out the biodiversity in those watersheds,” said Jordan Lubetkin, Healing Our Waters communications director.
The organization also awarded a similar amount to the Great Lakes Lifeways Institute in Michigan to study if native wild rice can replace phragmites in the Saginaw Bay.
Though the invasive grass has been used elsewhere to control soil erosion and as a natural wastewater treatment filter, agencies like the Indiana Department of Natural Resources have outlawed it in all such facilities because it chokes out native species.
The plant’s fast-spreading and quick-growing roots have helped it colonize habitats of native cattails, sages, bulrushes, pondweeds and floating-leaf plants like the water lily and other shallow water plants, said Mike Libben, the director of the Lake Erie Weed Management Area.
It’s not all evil.
The plant is a food source for livestock but only in its early growth stages. It also provides hiding and heat cover for ducks and big game species such as deer during cold seasons.
But experts say it doesn’t feed animals needed for shoreline biodiversity.
Also, its impenetrable bamboo fence-like density along marsh edges makes for lousy nesting for waterfowl and most native birds.
That is harmful for western Lake Erie marshes used as stopover for migratory birds and animals, said Greg Schneider, a botanist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The coalition will spray herbicide and then burn the grass once it is dead, Libben said.
It will also check if beneficial plants repopulate the area once it’s cleared. If they don’t, they’ll re-seed it.
The work around Saginaw Bay will take a different approach.
Wild rice. Photo: Virginia Department of Conservation & Recreation
The Great Lakes Lifeways Institute is investigating where wild rice beds were once located and why they disappeared. It hopes to recreate favorable conditions to encourage their return.
If the study shows favorable conditions for the rice, the organization hopes to partner with tribal and government agencies to restore it, said Barb Barton, the natural resource director for the organization.
Experts suspect that wild rice was replaced in coastal marshes by the phragmites which birds, fish and other animals don’t eat. It also doesn’t provide cover for young fish the way the rice does, Barton said.
Both wild rice and phragmites prefer shallow, slow-moving rivers, streams and lakes but unlike the phrgamites, wild rice has shallower, slow-growing roots which make it easier for phragmites to overtake it.
The Saginaw Bay organization wants to restore the wild rice because it provides cover, a nursery for small fish and frogs, hang out sites for numerous birds and what amounts to sometimes up to 94 percent of some birds’ grain diet in the fall, said Barton.
Wild rice ranks as one of the most significant waterfowl plants because its seed maturation coincides with the fall migration, providing stop-over habitat for wood duck, mallard, blue-winged teal, redhead and other migrant waterfowl, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.