(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors Tuesday heard an annual report from County Weed Commissioner Tanner Bouchard. Bouchard says when it comes to noxious weeds, Canada Thistle remains at the top of the list. But he says they are closely monitoring some newer problematic weeds that have been found in the Dickinson county, including leafy spurge…
“We had four new locations of that. It’s still primarily in the southern half of our county, there’s a few in the northern half of the county. The reason leafy spurge is a concern is that it is toxic to the grazing animals in the county. So it’s something I always urge people to kind of keep a lookout for. It’s very hard to spot, it’s only about two foot tall and it’s a perfect green, it blends into everything. So we do spray that as well. It spreads pretty easy in our roadsides.”
Another is called tanze (tan-zee). He describes it as a “species of concern”…
“The reason I have that on our species of concern is that even though it’s not on our invasive species and noxious weeds list in Iowa, it is on a noxious weed list in Minnesota and in a lot of provinces in Canada. So for us to find it, I talked to a bunch of other weed commissioners throughout the state. Nobody else has seen it, which makes sense that we’re the first ones to see it due to our close proximity to Minnesota which is where it’s more prevalent. So I have that on there as a species of concern. The spots we did find were along the bike trail up by Spirit Lake. That got treated by our Conservation Board staff, and then there’s another spot by Camp Foster, kind of, on some DNR land.”
Bouchard speculates the weed was accidentally brought into those areas on some construction equipment…
“It’s pretty common, you know, for somebody to bring in a tracks dozer from a previous job site, it’s still got mud on it, it rains, that mud slides off. You know those guys are just out working so it’s nothing you can really do too much to stop that.”
Another relatively new weed that has him concerned is oriental bittersweet. Bouchard says it could pose a threat to bur oak trees if left unchecked. He says that weed was found this past season in two locations in Dickinson county that have since been treated for it.
