TOP OFFENDERS: SALTCEDAR Saltcedar (tamarisk) infests more than 500,000 acres in Texas. With no natural enemies to keep it in check, it has colonized more than 20,000 acres in the upper Colorado River watershed from Lake J.B. Thomas in Borden County to O.H. Ivie Reservoir in Concho, Coleman and Runnels counties. LCRA has noted saltcedar downstream of O.H. Ivie Reservoir and is in the process of educating private landowners on controlling it. Originally introduced by settlers in the early 1800s, saltcedar was planted as an ornamental, and in the 1900s it was planted as an erosion control method along waterways and stream banks. By the 1920s, saltcedar was rapidly invading one watershed after another. It greatly reduces the diversity of plant and animal life, is a vigorous seed producer (producing hundreds of thousands of seeds per season with high germination rates), and also reproduces from root buds. Most importantly, it uses up to 12 acre-feet of water per year or 200 gallons per day per plant. Saltcedar is an economically important brush species because of the management cost of trying to control it chemically over the large areas that it has invaded. On the upper portion of the Pecos River, an acre of dense saltcedar is estimated to use 5 to 7 acre-feet of water every year. With a conservative estimate of more than 6,500 acres of saltcedar infesting the river in this area, the annual water use by saltcedar exceeds 10 billion gallons. This is about the same amount of water consumed annually by a city with a population of 145,000. Because of the high water use, the water table often declines in areas dominated by mature saltcedar. For more information on this pest, and for recommendations on how to control saltcedar, contact your local county extension agent. For publications on saltcedar, go to http://tcebookstore.org.

What is desirable to one landowner may be undesirable to another, depending on their management goals.

Before implementing any land management activity, such as brush clearing, know your goal, and what effect the clearing will have on your wildlife population. You may want to consider leaving some native trees and brush for their benefit. Also make plans for revegetating the area with grasses or native trees to prevent soil erosion.

Plants play many roles in the environment, from wildlife habitat to filtering pollutants.

Here are a few pro-and-con facts about the popular (and populous) plant called honey mesquite.

PROS

• Mesquite is a legume that fixes nitrogen in the soil, creating natural fertilizer for use by other plants.
• Its dense wood is highly sought for furniture and flooring.
• The seed pods are an important source of food for insects, livestock, deer, birds and small mammals.
• Honey mesquite also provides cover for birds and small mammals.
• As a landscape tree, it is tolerant of drought, insects and heat.
• It is used as fence posts, furniture, building beams, fuel and charcoal.
• It is a good ornamental tree for a landscaped lawn because of its interesting asymmetrical spreading form.
• Native Americans used the seeds for bread and alcohol. A black dye or cement for pottery can be generated from mesquite, and the gum from the bark was eaten as candy or dissolved in water for dysentery, wound or scratchy throat treatment. CONS
• Mesquite becomes an invasive plant on disturbed lands and overgrazed rangelands if not managed properly.
• If a mesquite is shredded or cut off at ground level, the plant will resprout from a "bud zone" located on the trunk six to eight inches underground. It will then re-emerge as a shrubby plant instead of a single trunk tree. The deep underground bud zone also makes it difficult to control manually and chemically.
• Mesquite beans store well, maintaining excellent viability for years or even decades. There are about 30,000 seeds per kilogram.
• The seeds can be toxic to cattle and goats if eaten in large quantities. Symptoms of disease include loss of appetite, rapid weight loss, bulging eyes and death.

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