[APWG] What about native grass and herbaceous perennial colonizers?

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear Marc and All,

You mention that when you are doing your weeding in Maryland and want
indigenous early succession species, you are mentioning non-grass species?

What about the native perennial forest grasses and herbaceous perennials
that we saw at the Great Falls National Park in Maryland when I was out
teaching classes to DELDOT in 2000, or the other native grasses like the
Little Bluestem that I saw growing along the BWI Parkway in places?

The Elymus or Wild Ryes that have been so successful here in the West, and
in the forests of the East, a pinch of local seeds of the Canadian and
Virginia wild ryes should be sown in every spot where you pull a weed. 
These wild ryes are strongly allelopathic, giving off natural herbicides
that will suppress the resprouting of weeds seeds that may still be in the
soil wherever you have already weeded.

Sowing in wild ryes immediately after weeding an area, is like putting in
permanent weed seed suppression workers, plus they help start the natural
succession. The switchgrass, little bluestem, indiangrass and gama grasses
would do the same thing, but the seed for the wild rye would be the
cheapest and easiest to start with, then you could graduate to the more
expensive grasses once you get the wild ryes figured out.

Also, everyone should look at the herbaceous perennials, like DELDOT did
over a decade ago, that you can read at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/deldot.html when I did a class for them on
roadside native plants.  It might be interesting to go back and view the
DELDOT plantings, and see what worked after a decade?

The weeders of the East coast, should be looking at replanting all of the
non-tree and non-shrub forest understory plants that should be there in
your Eastern forests, like the sunflower family which will produce the
cheapest seeds like the goldenrods and rudbeckias, which at the same time
are very excellent weed killers.

Also try the legume family, the Claytonia which is a very strong
allelopathic plant and a good weed killer,  and try all of the
Eupatoriums, the milkweed, and the mint family.

And do not forget two other strong weed killer of Maryland, the Blue Eyed
grass or Sisyrinchium and the native violets that will have to be planted
as plugs.  And the frosting on the cake would be to replant a few Silenes
or some Shooting stars around your restoration sites, in the proper places
for them.

Once you surround your weeding efforts with 99% cover of these local
native grasses and native herbaceous plants, they can permanently suppress
the weed seeds from ever germinating, and that is very useful to protect
the spots where you have weeded already.

I hope this information is useful for the East Coast weeders reading this
list, and this method would work for anywhere in the world where you are
weeding out exotic plants, and want to end up with a weed-free local
ecosystem as the end product.

We need to go from weeding, to restoring 99% cover native grass and
herbaceous perennial understories that can help keep the weeds from ever
coming back.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333