The invasive plant Purple Loosestrife has been popping up around Clary Lake for some years now (the above picture shows Malcolm Burson cautiously sneaking up on an unsuspecting Purple Loosestrife plant back in July 2018) and this year is no exception. In previous years Malcolm Burson and I have taken on the plant removal task ourselves, but last year was just more than we could manage alone. Thankfully, Alan Clark stepped up and did an epic job of digging loads of PL out of a nearby field (see Purple Loosestrife Eradication Project Update) bagging it, and disposing of it on my burn pile. This year I had spotted some new plant locations, but with both Malcolm and I recovering from illnesses, we needed some more help. Well Hillary Relyea and her husband Ben Gerdts stepped up! They have property on the south side of Clary Lake (Hillary is the daughter or our Vice President, Steve Relyea) and they jumped at the opportunity to help with this initiative. They headed out today in kayaks and extracted 5 plants from around the lake including this monster up in the marsh that I had by chance spotted during the Marsh Paddle event last month. I’ve removed some big plants and I still can’t believe the size of that root ball he got out of the ground.

Purple Loosestrife is generally well established in the area and it is probably just a matter of time before the task of removing plants along Clary’s shoreline becomes an overwhelming task, but for the time being anyways, if we can continue to spot and remove individual plants when they turn up we should be able to keep the Clary environment free of this invasive plant for some years to come. I’ve been tracking plant locations on a Google Map (see our Purple Loosestrife Eradication Project page) and will update it with the locations of the plants Ben & Hillary removed today.

A few of the plants Ben removed today were new to me. He spotted them and removed them. If you spot any of these plants around the lake or even close to the lake, please either remove them with the roots if possible and dispose of them, or use our Contact Form to notify us so we can take care of them. Thank you!