ALLENTOWN, Pa. — One of the earliest-blooming invasive plants in Pennsylvania is spreading in local parks in dense, thick mats.
Allentown’s Cedar Creek Park, viewed Thursday, was covered in lesser celandine, a low-growing, mat-forming flower that’s been flagged by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
It turns out the innocent-looking plant — also known as the fig buttercup — grows like crazy and crowds out space for other native flowers.
And once it starts growing, it’s very hard to get rid of, officials say.
- Lesser celandine is growing in thick mats in Allentown's Cedar Creek Park
- It's considered an invasive species and chokes out native plants
- It's classified as a noxious weed by the state Agriculture Department
“Lesser celandine has a habit of forming very dense mats of vegetation,” Kelly Sitch, a U.S. Bureau of Forestry ecologist, says in a video posted to YouTube by the DCNR.
Sitch leads invasive plant identification field training for the DCNR’s district staff and educates the public on the issues and problems that invasive plant species have on our parks and forests.
“It quickly chokes out all of our native spring ephemeral wildflowers,” Sitch says in the video.
How to identify lesser celandine
The best time to identify lesser celandine is in the spring, when it’s in flower. That’s because the species produces bright yellow flowers with seven to twelve petals born on very long flower stalks.
The stalks have deep grooves, Sitch shows in the video, and the leaves of the plant are heart-shaped or kidney-shaped with a wavy margin.
In early-to-mid April, it forms thick mats along the ground and has spread through the commonwealth along rivers and streams, primarily.
Lesser celandine also doesn't seed as normal flowers do, but has bulblets at the base of every plant.
“Anytime that there’s flooding, soil disturbance or even mowing of lawns and roadsides, these bulblets can spread into adjacent areas. And thus the mats move from the riverside into our lawns and parks.”Kelly Sitch, U.S. Forest Bureau ecologist
“Anytime that there’s flooding, soil disturbance or even mowing of lawns and roadsides, these bulblets can spread into adjacent areas,” Sitch says in the video.
“And thus the mats move from the riverside into our lawns and parks.”
Getting rid of lesser celandine
Once lesser celandine starts to spread, experts say it’s hard to get rid of.
According to ecosystemgardening.com, all the bulblets have to be removed to stop the spread of the plant. That can be very laborious work, making it a Herculean task to stop the spread of the plant through natural areas.
But experts say it’s worth the effort, because the spring ephemerals it chokes out are plants that provide critical nectar and pollen for native pollinators, and fruits and seeds for other native insects and wildlife species.
That means we don’t want it aggressively overtaking the environment.
“It can be mechanically dug and removed,” Sitch says on the DCNR video. “However, extreme care should be taken to make sure that all the roots and bulblets are dug out at the same time as the majority of the plant.”
Lesser celandine recently was added to the state Agriculture Department’s noxious weed list — a list of plants determined to be injurious to public health, crops, livestock, agricultural land or other property and cannot be sold, transported, planted or otherwise propagated in Pennsylvania.
On the list, lesser celandine is classified as a Class B noxious weed, which means it’s widely established and cannot feasibly be eradicated.
