The Invasives

Multiflora Rose, Rosa multiflora

Multiflora Rose is on the Massachusetts prohibited plants list, which bans “the importation, sale, and trade of plants determined to be invasive in Massachusetts.” Multiflora Rose grows quickly and tends to crowd out other species. It has been deemed a significant threat to native species and natural communities.

In the 1940’s, a Pulitzer prize-winning novelist turned farmer named Louis Bromfield promoted the use of the aromatic floral shrub multiflora rose, Rosa multiflora, as an enduring natural fencing. Although his literary contributions are now largely forgotten, Bromfield was for a time amongst the notable American expat novelists living in Paris, drinking and dallying with the Hemingways, Fitzgeralds, and Gertrude Stein.

After Bromfield returned to the States in 1939, he bought a 600-acre farm in Ohio near his childhood home, which he named Malabar, and dedicated himself to a new type of farming. Writing in the magazine Humanities, Randall Fuller reveals Bromfield “helped insert into the American lexicon a new set of terms: organic, sustainable, environmental.”Adding, he “sought to conserve the soil, to farm sustainably, to produce diversity instead of the monocultural row crops that were fast becoming the hallmark of modern industrial farming.”

Of course any novelist turned farmer worth their story makes mistakes. Bromfield was seduced by the delicate flowers and tenacious strength of the invasive shrub multiflora rose. In his book “Malabar Farm” (published in 1948), he wrote, “Gradually we are working out a programme of multiflora rose not only for use in game shelter and food patches but as a means of replacing expensive permanent wire fencing.” Adding, “This rose hedge is extremely hardy. It ignores the winter and in one case where fire got accidentally in the hedge and destroyed a short stretch of it, vigorous new shoots came up immediately to replace the old.”

Multiflora rose was first brought to the United States from East Asia in the 1860s as a rootstock for ornamental rose bushes. Since Multiflora rose is particularly hardy, it was used to help more delicate varieties of roses survive and thrive. The process involves taking a cutting from one plant and grafting it onto the roots of another.

In the 1930s multiflora rose found its calling as more than a rootstock. Several agencies within the U.S. government, including the U.S. Soil Conservation Service and the Department of Agriculture started promoting its use as natural fencing for livestock and for controlling erosion. Bromfield’s advocacy in the 1940’s added literary luster and further boosted the plant’s popularity.

According to horticulturalist Bruce Wenning, by the 1960’s some conservationists were issuing warnings about multiflora rose. Nevertheless, additional reasons to continue planting it were still being proposed; these reasons ranged from feeding songbirds and deer to creating natural cover for wildlife. It was even suggested that multiflora rose could save lives by helping automobile drivers. In a piece published on ecolandscaping.org, Wenning wrote, “Some highway departments encouraged the use of multiflora rose on highway median strips to reduce headlight glare from oncoming traffic and as a natural crash barrier to stop
out-of-control cars because of this species’ ability to form dense thickets quickly.”

Multiflora rose, which has been found on 28 Sheriff’s Meadow properties including Quansoo Farm, Sheriff’s Meadow Sanctuary, and Nat’s Farm, is a thick thorny deciduous perennial shrub with jagged-edged leaves, clusters of white flowers with heart shaped petals, and bright red beads of fruit. It leafs out earlier in the spring than many other plants, thrives in the sun and manages quite well in the shade, climbs upwards of ten feet and eagerly spreads outwards.

Multiflora rose is a prolific seed-spreader. The NY Invasive Species information website explains that “the flowers produce copious quantities of sweet pollen,” and “seed germination is high; seeds can also remain viable in the soil for as long as 20 years.” Since multiflora rose is monoecious, both male and female reproductive parts are found on the same flower, the returns on one plant can be many. In addition, the
shrub has no natural predators, aside from humans who are now trying to rein it in.

There are a number of ways to try to contain multiflora rose. Mowing is recommended three to six times a year; pulling it out before it produces berries; cutting it down as far as possible; employing grazing goats who will do much of this work for the meal; and applying herbicides.

Last summer SMF staff cut a dozen large multiflora rose bushes off at the base at Quansoo Farm and Sheriff’s Meadow Sanctuary so that the rose hips couldn’t fully ripen and produce viable seed. “The multiflora rose is so well established on properties such as Sheriff’s Meadow Sanctuary and Quansoo Farm that we’re still in a triage phase of just trying to stop the onsite seed source,” SMF Land Steward Liz Loucks explains. Adding, that Habitat Management Asst. Lia Potter “went to war on some big multi-stem plants with a pocket handsaw and loppers within the wetland buffer shrub thicket between trail and pond.”

Loucks warns that there are additional challenges involved in managing multiflora rose. “The bushes’ large thorns can be hazardous to work around so it’s wise to wear safety glasses, thick clothing, and work gloves when trying to remove the stems. Tackling multiflora rose growing within native shrub thickets requires actual crawling to get in. It is tedious and frustrating and requires a mindset of being willing to get scratched, have your hair pulled, and later finding sticks in your hair and down your shirt.”

Frustrating, yes, however in the grand scheme of managing invasives, Loucks isn’t as concerned with multiflora rose as some of the others. “If I cut it down to the base over the winter it’s unlikely to produce a lot of flowers—and thus seed—in the next year, which is unlike porcelain berry, Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, which will still go on to produce multitudes of flowers from its new shoots. I am not seeing it invading the fields dominated by native sandplain grassland and heathland species like I see autumn olive, Elaeagnus umbellata, and bush honeysuckles, Lonicera spp., coming up under the trees within native meadows. In many instances it’s only found along the roadside edge of a preserve or at old homesites and farms.” Loucks also notes that she hasn’t seen multiflora rose seedlings germinating at Sheriff’s Meadow Sanctuary in as high numbers as some other invasives such as Japanese holly, Ilex crenata, and glossy buckthorn, Frangula alnus.

With apologies to literary legend and Louis Bromfield’s friend Gertrude Stein, a rose isn’t a rose isn’t a rose. And while some roses spread fast and furiously and should be contained, others can be nurtured. “I’ve been trying to encourage the growth of the three beautiful native rose species. Swamp Rose, Rosa palustris; Virginia rose, Rosa virginiana; and Carolina rose, Rosa carolina. They flower later in the summer with lovely pink blooms, and their rose hips are larger and less numerous than Multiflora. They are not climbing roses so they are not as tall and rarely reaching five feet,” says Loucks.

Multiflora Rose, Rosa multiflora. Photo by sheoftheplants

Multiflora Rose berries. Photo by Susan Elliott