I am bittersweet vine , not the slower and tender native bittersweet vine I have almost eliminated. My goal in life is to kill trees and assume control of your forests lands. I love the high carbon air you call polluted, and like all vines I grow fast and am robust — hard to kill. Heh, heh. I climb and shade every branch , and wrap the trunk to strangle every tree. Your silly grape and Virginia creeper do not know how to strangle trees, and the berries and fruit and leaves feed the feckless birds and mice, skunks, squirrels, and chipmunks. Deer and rabbits browse the foliage and stems, while various insects, are also nurtured by these weaker plants. Who needs such biodiversity!
My berries are cleverly pretty and birds eat my berries of poor nutrition, spreading seeds. I poison any mammals taking a taste. When I cover the forest floor I shade all shrub and tree seedlings, swallowing the sun for my own offspring thus eliminating forever the forest community. I am a parasite, killing my host from Vermont to Virginia and south. You can see my great success along the roads as dead trees remain above my bushy triumph, bare branch fingers reaching still for reprieve.
Some are fighting for forests with expert tools and I hope you do not know this. I ignore such scorn, silly human. You have so helped me spread, making wreaths and stretching my branches across your mantle sprinkling seeds in your garden lovely compost, thank you. Thank you for “trusting nature” and leaving me alone. Go to sleep little human. Even if you try to pull me out, my orange roots break leaving a small piece to easily grow. Heh, heh, heh.
Janet I. Clark
Leeds