Trout Lily Appreciation 

History of the area before horse farm...woodland? ;)

@@markjones5561 Yes a lowland wooded area along a creek heading strait to the Sangamon River. We are on the bluff over that creek. This property was sprayed with weed spray, sprout deterrent, and anti fungal spray for 17 years. They left us the records. Now we have native plants, morels of 2 species, toadstools, other fungi. Our first spring in 2004, it all grew up and thousands of Dandelions in greasy chemical soil. We mulch our plants and leaves every fall and feed the soil. Plus planted some native plants and bushes. The shingle oak out front had butt rot (bubbling black goo), but having native plants around it healed it. Happy wildlife everywhere. It is an amazing property. Have seen an amazing amount of wild life in this property over the years. BTW we love dandelions and we are eating some for breakfast tomorrow with a couple of home grown shiitakes and one oyster mushrooms and if lucky a morel or two.

@@RJack1915 that is great and welcome news. To know a land can recover from such a seemingly destroyed state. That makes me very happy .

Yes, we are very lucky to have a few decent size T. nivale populations in our area. In fact, we featured that species in our very first video :) I grew up about an hour south of Buffalo.

This is because to get people's attention the message needs to be pretty simplistic, because when they bother to look up from their glowing screen all they see is a wall of green. Alliaria IS a beautiful plant "doing its thing" in the environment where it evolved, and has its share (including humans) of predators that keep the population in check. Where it is introduced, those limits do not exist, and the native plant, at home with its population controls in place has no chance against a larger plant that does not need the soil fungi and has no population check after an airplane ride across the ocean. It simply shades out the other plants...not just this plant, but every one in the vicinity! Going in to try to protect these plants causes damage to the natives as well, but is the lesser of two evils.

It's not the lesser of two evils unless you consider death inherently problematic