On Saturday, March 5th, 20 high school students crawled out of bed and met in front of Ladue Middle School at 8 a.m. with an array of shovels, gloves and shears in front of them. Beyond the stack of supplies was a forest infested with the honeysuckle plant, a newfound threat to Missouri’s ecosystem. Shears in hand, the students embarked on a four-hour gardening adventure.
The event was put together by Ladue National Honor Society and the Missouri Stream Team. Students who signed up received an NHS point for every hour they spent weeding. Senior Kian Howe was a part of the group that got Ladue involved with the removal of honeysuckles in the community.
“Two years ago, SAGE (Student Action for a Greener Earth) was trying to figure out what we could do in the community, like volunteer work, to help with environmental action,” Howe said. “I had already been cutting honeysuckle in my yard and getting rid of it for a couple of years beforehand. I suggested we could try targeting it in our local communities, as it’s an invasive species. So, with the original SAGE group, we would go out to places like this, community parks and people’s houses to cut honeysuckle.”
Honeysuckle has become a problem within various Midwestern ecosystems, as it is not a native plant. The plant is a threat to biodiversity due to its rapid growth and danger to animals within the community. Birds and other species avoid the plant, meaning it will continue to grow and spread throughout the area.
“What it does differently than all other plants is it grows its first leaves much earlier and it loses leaves much later, which means it has more of a chance to grow and take over an area overcrowding other species,” Howe said. “When we have one species controlling the entirety of the undergrowth, even some of the upper layers of the forest, it weakens the ecosystem greatly.”
The group of students met in the parking lot next to the creek on Clayton road at the middle school. There, they were given a rundown on how to find honeysuckle and how to properly remove it. The students split off in pairs with shears and a pesticide to dab on the stump after cutting. Senior Emerson Linden was one of the students in charge of cutting and had done the honeysuckle hack before during first semester.
“I had a lot of fun being with my friends while doing something for the local community,” Linden said. “It sometimes got pretty tiring because some of the honeysuckles were the size of real tree branches. Regardless, I would love to do this again. This was my second time and I had fun with it. After doing this, I definitely notice honeysuckle a lot more.”
