TOM THOMPSON
To many passers-by, it’s a bright yellow flowery masterpiece this time of year.
But don’t let the brilliant color along roadsides and hillsides fool you: Scotch broom is a sinister weed — legally “noxious” — that creeps its way across the North Olympic Peninsula.
A single large plant can produce up to 10,000 seeds annually, creating ofspring that chokes out native vegetation as it spreads across a landscape.
And it shows no mercy: Scotch broom can infest a rock quarry or expensive landscaping with the same menace.
During the summer, Scotch broom pods explode like miniature grenades and scatter seeds up to 20 feet away. Once in the soil, the seeds can sprout new growth for up to 80 years, according to the National Park Service.
As in any war, sometimes there are casualties.
Last weekend, Jefferson County Commissioner David Sullivan slipped while trying to remove Scotch broom on a slope at his Cape George home.
He tumbled down a bluff about 40 feet and had to be airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with a cracked vertebra and a compressed lower lumbar vertebra.
He’s hopeful of returning to the county courthouse this week, albeit in a walker with other assistance.
From outside Scotland
Though it is named Scotch or Scot’s broom, the plant originated in southern Europe and northern Africa, not just its namesake Scotland (where it is called broomwood) and the British Isles, according to the King County noxious weed control program.
Scotch broom and its southern European cousin, Spanish broom, were introduced to the United States in the 1840s to 1860s as a garden ornamental plant.
In the 20th century, it was a popular means of erosion control along new roads because it grows quickly along freshly cut banks.
But researchers and highway engineers learned that the Scotch broom plant quickly eradicates native plants by leeching a substance through its root system into the soil that starves neighboring plants of nutrients.
Then it takes over large areas where nothing else will grow.
The seeds also are transported from place to place in mud stuck to vehicles, equipment, shoes and the feet of animals.
They also may be carried via runoff from roads into streams and gullies. Then seedlings establish along streamsides and along gully walls.
Get them while small
Property owners can help keep the plants in check, say noxious weed coordinators for Clallam and Jefferson counties, by removing them as soon as they sprout — the smaller the better.
But if landowners have larger plants to contend with, the Clallam and Jefferson County Extension offices loan devices called the Weed Wrench, manufactured by a company in Grants Pass, Ore.
In Clallam, a $20 deposit is required to borrow the heavy Weed Wrench needed to leverage against the strength of the embedded larger plants.
A sign-up list for the tool is available at the Extension office in the old section of the Clallam County Courthouse in Port Angeles.
The phone number is 360-417-2280 to check on the availability of the wrenches.
There is no deposit required at the Jefferson County Extension Office in Port Hadlock, but interested weed-pullers should call 360-379-5610 to ask about availability.
A few more Weed Wrench devices are available for loan at Whitney Gardens in Brinnon, a co-sponsor in Jefferson County.
How the devices work is diagrammed on the company’s Web site, www.weedwrench.com.