[MPWG] 'Mother Vine' sprayed with weedkiller

[MoonBranch Botanicals]

http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/7908232/

'Mother Vine' sprayed with weedkiller

MANTEO, N.C. —A massive grapevine that may have been growing on North Carolina's coast since the 1500s is recovering after being sprayed with a powerful weedkiller.

Multiple media outlets reported the scuppernong grape vine known as the Mother Vine, located on Roanoke Island, was sprayed by a contractor working for Virginia-based Dominion Power.

"From what I saw, this was just basically a lack of common sense," said Donald Hawkins, owner of Vineworks in Duplin County, who was called in to help save the vine.

The vine's crime: a single strand about as thick as an electric wire had climbed a few feet up a nearby power pole. So a contract employee hired to spray vines that were encroaching on power poles sprayed it with a herbicide whose label warns against using it on grape vines.

"We're just sick about it," said Chuck Penn, a Dominion spokesman. "It's something that never should have happened."

Jack Wilson, who has cared for the vine since he bought the property where it grows in 1957, first noticed the vine had brown areas in late May. He said he wasn't contacted for permission to spray on his property, where about 10 feet of a hedge has died and three limbs of a pecan tree died.

"It was not just this vine," Wilson said. "It's the whole north end of the island."

The contractor was trained and licensed but made a mistake, said Dan Oberlies, a senior vice president with Dominion. The worker was retrained in spraying procedures and in getting permission from property owners, Oberlies said.

Dominion hired an expert from Virginia Tech to inspect the plant and recommend treatment. After a few weeks of daily watering, regular fertilizing and pruning, Wilson and the experts think the vine will survive. But the family won't eat or harvest the grapes this season, just to be safe, Wilson said.

Hawkins returns this week to do more pruning and apply more fertilizer.

Historians think the vine was alive when the first Englishmen explored Roanoke Island in the late 1500s. Scuppernongs are a type of native muscadine and were the first U.S. cultivated wine grapes. Cuttings from the Mother Vine have become part of a vineyard in Duplin County that produces a popular scuppernong wine.

Robin Alton Suggs
MoonBranch Botanicals
5294 Yellow Creek Road
Robbinsville, North Carolina 28771 
USA

Telephone: 828.479.2788
moonbranch at earthlink.net
www.moonbranch.com

Member:
Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project; Farm Partner
Green Products Alliance 
North Carolina Consortium on Natural Medicines 
North Carolina Goodness Grows/NCDA&CS 
Southwestern North Carolina RC&D Council
United Plant Savers

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