ROXBURY — Examining soggy plants on several small white plates in the camp’s pavilion room, about 20 people with a vested interest in knowing which of those plants are invasive in their local waters consulted their field guides to record their best answers.
Lake Stewards of Maine, a volunteer lake monitoring program, held the plant identification class at Silver Lake Campground in Roxbury, where Silver Lake, also known as Ellis Pond, is located.
Roberta Hill, director of the invasive species program, and Drew Perlmutter, manager of education and outreach projects for Lake Stewards of Maine, led the class of enthusiastic students, some of whom would receive their Invasive Plant Patrol certification after participating in class.
“After today, you’ll have a good idea of what makes a plant suspicious of being an invader, and that’s all you need to know,” Hill said. “You don’t have to know the name of one of these plants here on the table to be a very effective early detector (of invasive plants).”
Ross Swain, a campground owner at Ellis Pond, hosted the event. He and his group, the Ellis Pond Sidekicks, currently have 1,200 members, he told Thursday’s class.
“(Our pool is) not just for people at the pond or camp owners; it’s for the general public,” Swain said. “Anyone who wants to learn a bit about water quality work or just wants to see some nice photos of the area can become a member and interact with what’s going on.”
Hill explained that Thursday’s two-hour class was once part of a six-hour training that ended with a plant identification exercise. Currently, anyone interested can get a full training on invasive aquatic plant identification by logging on to the Lake Stewards of Maine website at lakestewardsofmaine.org.
A portion of the online course describes the 11 invasive aquatic plants that are considered imminent threats to Maine waters, Hill said. The threat of these invasive species of aquatic plants “is considered one of the greatest threats to our pristine waters,” she said.
But Maine is doing better than many other states. “Far less than 1% of our lakes and ponds are infested with an invasive-type plant,” Hill said.
Hill also said that “we’ve been lucky in Maine” and “we’ve done some things right to build resiliency in our bodies of water.
“One of those things, and it’s a theory that hasn’t been proven as far as I know with hard data, but Maine has long been at the forefront of protecting our lakes and ponds,” he said.
Preventing soil erosion in our waters and keeping invasive plants out of our waters are some of the most important things we can do for our water bodies, he said.
Perlmutter explained that people must remove the plants from their boats before they reach their destination on the water.
“Clean your boat and drain your boat away from any body of water,” he said. For example, all yarrow plants are considered a suspected invasive species and “can spread within 1 inch of the plant.”
Perlmutter also showed off some tools, some of them handmade, that can be used to monitor water quality and plant life in the water. These visors can be used on kayaks and canoes, and aquatic visors can be purchased online or made by hand, she said.
Another tool that can be used to find and remove plant pieces from the water is a long-handled rake. Lake Stewards of Maine does not recommend removing an entire suspect plant from the water, but asks that the plant specimen be placed in a water bottle or other container of water and stored in a cool place, and that the organization be contacted at [email protected] or 207-783-7733 for more information.
Christy Stout from Dedham was one of the participants in the plant identification class. While making his way through one of the six plant identification stations, he was able to identify, through the use of a Quick Key guide and the Maine Field Guide to Invasive Aquatic Plants, that none of the four submerged plants in their bowls it was invasive.
Based on the questionnaire you received, there are three drifter invaders on Maine’s watch list: Water Chestnut, European Frog, and Yellow Floaterheart.
Another class attendee, Chris Risily from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, made his way through the plant identification stations while giving tips to others on how to identify invasive plants. He emphasized that he agreed with Lake Stewards of Maine organizers that it is more important to know what makes a plant suspicious than to learn all the plant names.
Mary LaPointe, another attendee with a home on Worthley Pond in Peru, said she was taking the class because she was going to do the invasive plant patrol for the pond. Other members of the Ellis Pond Sidekicks, Janet Farrington and her husband, Keith, of Andover, as well as Deanna Kersey, director of marketing for Maine’s Black Mountain, also attended the plant identification class.
Source: https://6park.news/maine/invasive-aquatic-plant-identification-class-teaches-how-to-recognize-invasive-plants.html