Volunteers Succeed in Saving a Trail and Cleaning Hillside of Broom

Only five volunteers showed up for the final broom pull of the season, but we cleared a large area of about 60 feet by four feet of the invasive plant.

May 1, 2019: The area around the Madera to Julian Trail in the Hillside Natural Area was becoming dangerously overgrown, as drenching winter rains caused every plant in Northern California to grow quickly – including invasive broom.

 This yellow flowered, woody plant with thankfully shallow roots was overwhelming a wonderful trail in the Madera Open Space section of the Hillside that Trail Trekkers had laid out and built some years ago.

 So Trekkers sprung into action, working with the Environmental Quality Committee’s Green Teams, to save the trail from becoming completely overgrown, and to remove other large patches of broom from areas nearby.

 Howdy Goudey of the EQC lead the effort, with many volunteers from both groups. It was fun, deeply satisfying work. On April 28 – the last broom pull for the season – we found the ground growing hard, making it more difficult to pull.

Neil Tsutsui at work

Broom plants that in March and February (and during Earth Day in April) would come up easily, by hand, now required the use of weed wrenches that lever the plants from the earth.

 Broom is an oily plant that contributes to fire danger so removing it is valuable for that reason too.

We will return to the broom fight next year. Broom grows back, but it can be successfully removed. Many areas in the city that were once awash in the stuff – along Moeser lane, for example – are now free of it,  and thus provide better habitat for native plants and animals.