Allow me to humbly admit than when we first moved to Tillamook County over twenty years ago, I, too, was taken with the beauty of this May bloomer. The masses of yellow on Bay Ocean spit and along the hillsides took my breath away. There was just so much of it and it was everywhere!
It wasn’t until I took the Oregon State Extension Service’s Master Gardener classes in 2002 that I realized what a nuisance this plant has been. Like English Ivy, it was brought to North America with the best intentions. According to Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the arrival of Scotch broom has been traced to Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant who brought seeds to Vancouver Island in 1850. Captain Grant was a recent immigrant from Scotland, and he had been given the seeds in the Sandwich Islands by the British consul there, a Mr. Wylie. One can only speculate that the good captain was a tad homesick and Mr. Wylie shared some of his seeds to help him through.
It is said that only three of these seeds germinated and colonized most of the southern part of Vancouver Island. Now it has spread into Washington and Oregon and endangers many of our native roadside plants. Some folks have used the seeds as a coffee substitute or pickled the broom flowers to make wine. But these turned out to be bad ideas as the broom contains toxic alkaloids that can depress the nervous system and the heart.
The best way to get rid of Scotch broom in one’s garden is to pull it out by the roots. If it is young enough, this is easy to do. Older plants will have to be wrenched out with tools. Getting as much of the root as possible is desired, as with most weeds. But if you are persistent, you can also repeatedly cut the stems at the base. This should be done each spring as soon as you see the plants sprouting.
Unfortunately, we tend to forget how invasive Scotch broom is in the summer and fall because when the flowers have gone to seed (in a long pod resembling a pea pod), the plants are easily camouflaged by natives. So they can be easily missed in a field of other plants. If you are inundated with more than a few dozen plants, spraying with an herbicide in the fall may be helpful. The plant’s sugars are moving to the roots at that time, and take the poisons to the roots with them. But, as always when using pesticides, please use caution and use only products that are labeled for use on Scotch broom. Spraying herbicide in a field of mixed plants will kill them all, good and bad. So dig and pull may be the only way in a case like that, too.
As pretty as it is, pulling Scotch broom can be a neighborly thing to do and good for the environment. I try to yank small ones I see when I am walking the dogs through the parks. Knock wood, none have invaded my gardens so far, but I am diligently watching for the least little sprout and get it when it’s easy to do. (I do the same with Equisetum, or horsetail.)
You should excuse the expression considering the topic of this column, but gardening around Scotch broom certainly takes a “Braveheart.”
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