When people ask us about Hilton Pond Center's mission--"to conserve animals, plants, habitats, and other natural components of the Piedmont Region of the eastern United States through observation, scientific study, and education for students of all ages"--they understand our intent but sometimes ask "What's the Piedmont?" In brief, the Piedmont physiographic province extends from southeastern New York to central Alabama (see map below left), bounded on the east by the Coastal Plain and to the west by the Appalachians and associated mountains. As a region the Piedmont is marked by rolling hills, by lots of rivers and streams, and--at least in its southeastern sections--by expanses of red clay. The latter arose primarily from weathering of subsoil exposed when substantial topsoil above it was depleted or eroded away due to poor farming practices. Indeed, the Piedmont has been the most heavily abused ecosystem in the eastern U.S. because it was such a great place for agriculture; farms and towns that sprang up within the Piedmont also made it the most heavily fragmented. In recent years, many Piedmont farmsteads have been abandoned, sometimes overrun by towns and cities but often just allowed to revert to a more natural state. Although the resulting vegetational succession should be good news, 200-plus years of row crops and grazing not only depleted Piedmont soil but eliminated seeds and rootstocks of many native plants. Under such conditions, what often flourished on old farms and spoil places were invasive foreign plants that in marginal habitats could actually out-compete native species. It's nice to have plant life that thrives in unused Piedmont landscape, but when those plants are the likes of Multiflora Rose, we're presented with a very thorny problem.

All text & photos © Hilton Pond Center

Multiflora Rose--whose technical epithet of Rosa multiflora is an easy scientific name to remember--is so-called because it produces many flowers in a cluster. (Native roses usually bear individual, unclustered flowers.) This Asian species was introduced from Japan to the eastern U.S. in the mid-1860s as rootstock for less-hardy ornamental roses. Not long afterwards it escaped cultivation, creeping its way up and down the Eastern Seaboard and points west. In the 1930s, its advance accelerated when the Soil Conservation Service began advising farmers to plant Multiflora Rose to retard erosion and even to serve as a "living fence" whose sharp thorns could contain animals as large as cattle and horses. Game agencies extolled the virtues of Multiflora Rose as a source of cover for Eastern Cottontails, Bobwhite, and other birds. (Has there ever been a Multiflora Rose thicket in the Carolinas that despite its impenetrable appearance didn't sooner or later host the nest of a pair of Northern Mockingbirds?) In addition to providing shelter, red rose hips about a quarter-inch round (right) were touted as excellent cold-weather food for everything from White-footed Mice to White-tailed Deer. Birds also like rose hips as a late-winter snack high in Vitamin C, but one problem is the fruits are loaded with seeds whose germination success is enhanced if they pass through a bird and are deposited in its droppings. And because Multiflora Rose also propagates by runners AND by sprouting where its long, arching canes touch the ground, it doesn't take long for a single rose shrub to produce a plethora of progeny both near and far. In fact, it's not uncommon here in the Carolina Piedmont to see an old pasture (top photo) almost completely covered by a near-monoculture of Multiflora Rose, each plant capable each year of producing thousands of flowers (below) and a million or more seeds--some of which will be viable in the soil for up to two decades! It's no wonder the species is now found almost everywhere in the continental U.S. and Canada except for the Rocky Mountain region.

The worst thing about Multiflora Rose is it's an attractive plant, with a multitude of breathtaking white blossoms that stand out against dark green foliage when May arrives. (Native roses usually have pinkish flowers, while Multiflora Rose rarely does.) It seems a pity to dislike a plant so pleasing to the eye, but we do all we can to whack back every non-native rose can we can at Hilton Pond Center. Despite our efforts, each spring we always seem to find another Multiflora Rose bush or, worse yet, a mature old two-inch-diameter cane--brown and covered with flaking bark--that has sneaked and snaked its way up a supportive tree trunk to make foliage and flowers 20 feet or more from the ground. Cutting this stem at its base kills what we can see, but the next spring we typically find numerous new canes sprouting from the rootstock. We could apply herbicide to the freshly cut stem, but our preference is to prune the sprouts year after year before they flower and until the mother plant finally dies.

Multiflora Rose--invasive, painful to encounter, and hard to get rid of, but delightful to look at and useful for wildlife. To kill, or not? Here in the Carolina Piedmont, it's a thorny problem indeed.

"This Week at Hilton Pond" is written & photographed
by Bill Hilton Jr., executive director of
Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History.

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