Ecological Ring-Around-the-Rosy: When Invasives Aren’t All Bad

The vines of a Himalayan blackberry bush, <a href="https://medium.com/@adriennedomingus/rubus-fairytales-and-a-shared-seattle-nemesis-ecc3afa1f8a6" rel="noopener">my least favorite rubus</a>, live for two or three years and can grow to be as thick as my thumb. When they die back, new ones grow in their place, but the old ones remain — dead, dry and brown, but entangled and still sharp. Over time a veritable thicket forms, impenetrable to a human, but not bad at all as a nesting site for songbirds, who use it like they might a brush pile or stand of native rubus or other woody shrub. This is why removal efforts halt in March, as birdsong largely absent in the preceding months, begins to make its return. The risk of destroying a nest is too high — what good would an invasive-free piece of land be, if there were no birds? <a href="https://adriennedomingus.medium.com/ecological-ring-around-the-rosy-when-invasives-arent-all-bad-1a8cccd73f32">Visit Now</a>