Iowa

Iowa wildflower Wednesday: Poison hemlock

Published

3 months ago

June 20, 2024

Iowa wildflower Wednesday: Poison hemlock

Radio Iowa reported on June 14 that Hancock County Weed Commissioner Jason Lackore “is sounding the alarm” after finding poison hemlock in two public areas upstream from sites where cattle producers let their animals graze.

“If it was any other plant, I wouldn’t be making such a fuss, but this plant — all parts are extremely poisonous to humans, domestic animals,” Lackore said. “And you hear a lot about livestock, cattle, ingesting small amounts. It’s fatal.”

Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) is best known as an ancient method of execution, used to kill the Greek philosopher Socrates. This European native has unfortunately spread across the U.S. and is prevalent in Iowa. I see it almost every day while walking my dog. I took all of the photos enclosed below less than a mile from my home in Windsor Heights.

Habitats where poison hemlock thrives “include edges of degraded wetlands and prairies, low-lying areas along small rivers, banks of drainage ditches, thickets, woodland borders, fence rows, low-lying areas along railroads and roads, pastures, and abandoned fields.” You will mostly likely find it on disturbed ground, such as near railroad tracks or pavement. This patch is growing next to the parking lot behind the “Sherwood Forest” strip mall on Hickman Road.

That purple sign reads “prairie restoration.” It went up around twelve years ago, when a local student seeded a prairie patch in this area for his Eagle Scout project. Unfortunately, with no one maintaining the plantings, the field became overrun with invasive plants within a few years. I rarely see prairie species there anymore.

There’s no natural check on poison hemlock; according to Illinois Wildflowers, “Mammalian herbivores won’t touch the foliage because of its bitter rank odor and extreme toxicity.”

Like wild carrot, which it resembles, and other members of the parsley family, these plants are on a two-year cycle. Basal leaves grow during the first year, and the flowering stalk appears the following year.

The next image shows the plant in its first year.

In the second year, poison hemlock plants typically reach heights of three to eight feet. I’ve seen them much smaller, though; this one was barely one foot tall.

Some native plants—such as common elderberry and cow parsnip—also have clusters (umbels) of small white flowers blooming in May or June across Iowa. But the leaves and flower clusters on those plants look quite different.

Minnesota Wildflowers notes another distinguishing feature of poison hemlock: “The main stem is light green and covered in purple spots.” You can see a splotchy stem on the right side of this image.

After the blooming period, the foliage turns yellow, and the stems may look mostly red, rather than splotchy.

I struggle to photograph poison hemlock flowers, which “span only 1/8″ (3 mm.) across when they are fully open.” This plant has buds on the verge of opening as well as clusters of flowers in full bloom.

More flowers open:

Iowa wildflower Wednesday: Poison hemlock

Getting a clear view of the green fruit as it develops is also challenging. These plants have some clusters of flowers open and other clusters of green seed pods.

Eradicating poison hemlock is not easy. Illinois Wildflowers advises, “In removing this plant from a given area, don’t pull it out using your bare hands. It is better to wear washable gloves while hand-pulling a limited number of plants. For large areas of infestation, it is best to apply broadleaf herbicides or mow down the plants during the spring shortly before they develop flowers.”

Nadia Hassani wrote on The Spruce website,

Small first-year seedlings can be removed by hand. After a rain when the soil is moist is best to remove the entire tap root. You might have to use a trowel or a shovel if the rosette is already big.
If you are dealing with a heavy infestation and a large area, mowing the infestation repeatedly helps to weaken the plants. Mowing must be done in the early summer before the plant has set seeds, otherwise you are dispersing the seeds even more. Mowing in the late summer after poison hemlock has gone into see[d] also poses a greater health hazard.
If you cannot get the infestation under control manually, it is best to use a broad-spectrum herbicide in the first year of the plant’s life cycle.7 Keep in mind that it will also kill all the other plants so apply it in a highly targeted way and when there is no wind to avoid herbicide drift. Applying an herbicide does not prevent seeds that are already in the soil from germinating (poison hemlock seeds remain viable for up to six years)8 so you will likely have to repeat the herbicide application when new seedlings emerge.
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I hate to advocate for herbicide in any context. But look what can happen if you don’t get poison hemlock under control. This colony is growing in a retention basin just steps away from the parking lot of Clive elementary school, my alma mater (which is now called Clive Learning Academy). I’m talking about the taller plants that are turning yellow.

Here’s the view from the other direction. I believe the poison hemlock surrounding that cluster of eastern cottonwood trees in the background likely provided the seed base for the plants now growing in the retention basin. I’ve seen poison hemlock around those trees since I learned to identify the plant a decade or so ago.

As I mentioned above, poison hemlock does well on disturbed ground, so this European invader would have easily found a foothold after the West Des Moines school district built a circle drive behind Clive school.

Moving closer to those trees, which are growing next to the bike trail that runs through Windsor Heights along North Walnut Creek, you can see the poison hemlock more clearly.

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Iowa

Obituary for Anthony M. Puccio at Farley

Published

6 hours ago

September 27, 2024

Press Room

Obituary for Anthony M. Puccio at Farley

Anthony M. Puccio, 76, of Farley, Iowa, passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on Wednesday, September 25, 2024, at his home in Farley. Visitation for Tony will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, September 29, 2024, at the Reiff Funeral Home in Farley, Iowa where the

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Iowa

Iowa sues company accused of dumping disused wind-turbine blades at sites across state

Published

14 hours ago

September 27, 2024

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Iowa sues company accused of dumping disused wind-turbine blades at sites across state

Clark Kauffman
| Iowa Capital Dispatch

The state of Iowa is suing a Washington state company and its executives for allegedly dumping tons of old wind-turbine blades around Iowa, in violation of the state’s solid-waste laws.

The lawsuit alleges that over the past seven years, Global Fiberglass Solutions has failed to properly dispose of decommissioned wind-turbine blades and stockpiled them at multiple locations across Iowa.

The lawsuit, filed in Iowa District Court for Jasper County, seeks payment of civil penalties and a court injunction to prevent any additional violations of the state’s solid-waste laws.

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Global Fiberglass Solutions and its CEO, Donald Lilly, are named as defendants in the case, as is Ronald Albrecht, one of Global’s corporate officers. The defendants could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit claims that General Electric, which provides parts and equipment for wind turbines, and MidAmerican Energy, which owns wind turbines in Iowa, each hired Global in 2017 to recycle their decommissioned wind-turbine blades.

MidAmerican and General Electric paid Global “millions of dollars,” the lawsuit alleges, to cut up, transport, and recycle the blades. Typically, such blades are about 170 feet long and weigh roughly 16 tons.

Rather than recycle the blades, the lawsuit claims, Global instead dumped roughly 1,300 of them at four locations around the state: Newton, Atlantic and a site in Ellsworth that was used to store blades that were originally dumped in Fort Dodge.

At one time, the lawsuit alleges, there were about 868 blades stored at the Newton site, which was a parking lot for the former Maytag factory. In Ellsworth, Global allegedly dumped 400 blades in a field, directly on the ground. In Atlantic, 22 blades were dumped in a field, directly on the ground, according to the lawsuit.

State says company never posted bond ensuring blades would be recycled

In 2018, according to the lawsuit, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources began fielding complaints about the Newton site. In 2020, the department sent Global a notice of violation related to the sites in Fort Dodge and Newton, indicating the blades were not being recycled as claimed and had simply been discarded. Later that year, a similar notice was issued regarding the Ellsworth site.

In December 2020, the lawsuit alleges, Global agreed to a consent order obligating the company to “take a number of concrete steps to purchase, install, and commence using recycling equipment” to process a certain percentage of the blades according to a series of deadlines.

The company also was required to post a $2 million surety bond to defray state expenses should the DNR be forced to remove and dispose of the blades because of Global’s lack of compliance with the consent order.

The DNR then agreed to extend the deadline for posting the bond until April 1, 2021.

Global never posted the bond, according to the lawsuit, and so the DNR ordered Global to stop accumulating wind-turbine blades in Iowa and to remove all of the blades scattered at the disposal sites. Global didn’t comply with that order and in July 2021 the matter was referred to the Iowa attorney general’s office for legal action.

The state’s lawsuit against Global was filed thie week of Sept. 22, three years after that referral. It seeks a civil penalty of up to $5,000 for each day the company was out of compliance with Iowa’s solid-waste laws.

State records indicate MidAmerican has removed and properly disposed of the blades once located at the Ellsworth site, while General Electric has removed the blades from Atlantic and Newton — a task that was completed in June this year.

Global and its executives “dumped and abandoned 1,300 decommissioned wind-turbine blades in stockpiles across the state,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a news release. “We are taking action to hold them accountable.”

Find this story at Iowa Capital Dispatch, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: kobradovich@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

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Iowa

Iowa DOT trains for winter driving before it arrives

Published

21 hours ago

September 27, 2024

Press Room

Iowa DOT trains for winter driving before it arrives

STORM LAKE, Iowa (KCAU) — Every year, just before winter, Iowa DOT snowplow drivers are put to the test in a simulation to freshen up their skills.

The Iowa DOT contracts with L3Harris Technologies, a company that operates a variety of simulations, to get drivers behind the wheel of a snowplow without being on the road.

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“The seat that the operator sits in is very realistic in the fact that if you are drifting over to the edge of the road and hitting rumble strips, your seat is going to shake,” Craig Bargfrede with the Iowa DOT said. “The controls in the simulator are very, very similar to what you will actually see in the cab of one of our trucks.”

Over the course of two hours, drivers are put through a variety of simulations pf scenarios they could encounter this winter.

“Large areas where high volume traffic, where you have cars all around the truck to rural roads that, you know, you only have two lane type roads… they’ll throw in fatigue scenarios,” Bargfrede said.

Once the person finishes their simulation, the instructor informs them how they did and what they need to improve on.

“Every operator that comes through there is given a score, obviously, but those that may end up on the lower end of the spectrum are just operators that when we provide this feedback to the garage supervisors that maybe trigger some remedial training and the actual truck itself and go through some additional training,” Bargfrede said.

DOT officials say this training has worked wonders over the years, ensuring their drivers are prepared for what’s to come.

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“The gist of this is to get our folks back into the winter mindset,” Bargfrede said. “We do some refreshers on winter driving skills all in a very confined, controlled environment, where, you know, mistakes can be made and learned from and it’s better to do it in that simulator than out on the actual roadway.”

Bargfrede also wanted to remind people to give plows space once snow arrives to help prevent any accidents.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to SiouxlandProud | Sioux City, IA | News, Weather, and Sports.

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