Patuxent river here in MD

they seem to be planting it on roadside ditches that get and stay wet.

and yes it does seem to take over areas.

not real bad yet

would sure rather see native grasses.

I wonder if burning them would do anything good?

Nope burning doesn't help either.

Burning just makes them stronger, The ground is generally wet and the roots are protected, plus the ash fertilizes them, makes a great fire when they're dry but they bounce right back in the spring.

According to the USDA you need to hit it with multiple methods, herbicide, burns and flooding.

Phragmite has taken over the Lake St.Claire ecosystem. The area is now notorious for producing thousands of undersized rats.

they are easy to kill, just some round up when they have a big head, spray one year and again the next and they are dead,

They are getting bad here....I heard the something about trying to kill them...tough suckers.

Killing them is only part of the problem, whats going to replace them? Those things love colonizing fresh ground... and will out compete everything else. You'd have to kill every one for an extensive area, but they will eventually fill in from the edges, and who pays for all that?....

I'll bet Capt. Morgan has a hot solution for it...

Lots of it in western Pa.

I worked for a group in the early '80s who.were working out methods of propagating emergent and submerged aquatic vegetation.

Some of the group were working on phragmites control, figuring it would be a gold mine if they figured out a cheap, effective method of control.

Haven't heard much since,.lol

It is a plague here. Worse than purple loosetrife ever was (and that was bad)!
Not sure how they're ever going to get it under control. I keep praying that they find a beetle like they did for loosetrife.
It causes a lot of problems here...and destroys a lot of waders LOL.. breaks off like pungee stakes.
It does make good grassing material for duck blinds, but I hate it.
They had some success at Rondeau Bay burning it and then scraping it down with a grader blade but not practical at scale

It's all over central Illinois along the roads. It must blow along the roads somehow?

Didn't realize they had a beetle that destroys purple loostrife. I'll have to research that thanks

It is spread here by the state/county/town/villages cutting ditches. Spread so fast in just a few years it was everywhere for a hundred miles I knew of

Not for several years....they declared us all "Arsonists" and threatened to lock us up. Now they only ones that burn marsh are the feds and md dnr ......and once in a while somebody drops a lit match by accident...

Phrag is the plant from hades, spray it, cut it and still fight yearly

It's possibly the hardest of all invasives to control.

AJE
Robinson Creek Preservation Association Invasive Species Coordinator

Spraying, cutting, burning and digging just makes it angry. Nutria eat a lot of it around here, but that just makes it angry as well.