All I could find on line that looked like this was the WATER HEMLOCK! One of the deadliest plants in N. America! Then I found these Pin Cherries, all over the place, and also toxic, not even goats can eat them!
And I think these are Red Maple, also toxic to horses! So much for my plans to let the horses clear the land.
I dropped samples of the first plant and the Pin Cherry off at the Pine Tree Aboritium, we pass it on the way to Pittston. The aborist wasn't in his office, so I left my number and he called about an hour later and said that the trees are indeed Pin Cherry, but the other plant was Bristly Sarsparilla, which isn't toxic and actually a beneficial root, and you can make soda from it too! You can tell because the stalks are prickly and the flower clusters are shaped like a ball, the Water Hemlock has flatter shaped clusters, more like a Queen Anne's Lace. Now I just have to find out about the maples, they aren't as plentiful as the Pin Cherry, which are EVERYWHERE! At least they should be easier to pull up than the Sarsparilla plants. We got a handy dandy bush grubber from Northern Tool
We'll be doing all that on Wednesday I think, thats when we're planning to move the run-ins.
2 comments:
The red maple (if it is red maple) is fine for them to eat off the live plant (sapling in this case) it is also ok to have them eat the leaves that fall in the autumn. The problems come from felled trees or large leafed out limbs that fall and begin to wither. There is a peroid of time during the wilt when leaves attached to branches hold a toxic amount of a chemicle that literally removes all oxygen from the horses blood. there is no way to reverse this process once it starts.
My horses are kept with several varieties of maple overhead including red. I keep all felled trees and downed limbs cleared and have no problem. They eat lots of leaves from saplings.
Ditto what ELL says. I found tons of red maples on my property when I bought that house in Buxton. I consulted with Dr. Dave Jefferson and he told me to remove any wind falls, broken limbs, etc. and otherwise wouldn't be a problem. My horses lived in the woods there. Most of the clearing they did was from walking over tree roots, compacting the soil, and killing the trees that way. Yes, some sugar maples lost their bark in the spring but that was about it for tree munching.
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