Rangeland care involves control of woody plants

Shrubs and trees are natural competitors with grasses and forbs on rangeland in Kansas. It is not practical, or even desirable, to control all woody vegetation on rangeland. Woody plants have value to cattle and wildlife around streambanks and ravines, for example. But excessive amounts of woody vegetation on grazing lands will reduce the livestock carrying capacity and should be controlled. Proper grazing with cattle will slow down woody plant invasion to some extent, but cattle do not consume large amounts of browse. Prescribed burning is the primary means of woody plant control on Flint Hills bluestem range. Annual mowing in the spring, once woody plants have leafed out, can also be effective.

With root-sprouting plants, the timing of control measures is especially important. The goal is to damage the plants when they reach their low ebb in food reserves. Almost all woody invaders of rangeland can sprout from the roots.

With plants that do not root-sprout, primarily eastern red cedar, mowing or burning can be effective at any time of the year. If eastern red cedars are mowed or cut, producers do not have to treat the stump with an herbicide since eastern red cedars do not root-sprout. Producers should make sure eastern red cedars are cut off below the lowest green branch, however. If any branches are left, regrowth is possible.

A combination of prescribed burning and mowing may be needed if there is a mixture of root-sprouting woody plants that reach their low ebb in food reserves at different times of the season. For example, buckbrush should be burned or mowed in late spring (late April to mid-May). Control measures taken at that time, however, will have no effect on smooth sumac, which reaches its low ebb in food reserves about a month later.

For this and other reasons, there may be areas of rangeland with highly concentrated stands of woody plants that were not controlled by fire or mechanical means. If those areas have good potential for producing desirable forage, producers should consider making spot treatments of the woody vegetation before it becomes unmanageable. Fall is a good time to make those treatments.

Scattered stands of individual trees or shrubs should either be treated individually using the basal bark method (for labeled plants less than 46 inches in diameter) or the cut stump treatment method. The basal bark and cut stump treatments will not be effective if there is standing water or ice around the base of the plant so that the plants cannot be treated down to the soil line. Producers can treat smaller susceptible woody plants individually this fall by spraying the basal stem parts with triclopyr plus diesel fuel. The lower 12 to 15 inches of the stems or trunks of susceptible small trees and shrubs should be thoroughly wetted with a triclopyr-diesel mixture. Triclopyr goes by the trade names Remedy and Pathfinder II. Pathfinder II is a ready-to-use product and does not have to be mixed with diesel. PastureGard is a pre-mix of triclopyr and fluroxypyr, and it can be applied as a basal bark or cut-stump treatment as a 50 percent solution in diesel.

If the woody plant is 46 inches in diameter or more, the best method is to cut it off at ground level and treat the cut surface and sides of the stump with triclopyr and diesel fuel within 30-60 minutes, before the sap seals over the exposed area. The stump of cottonwood, elm and oak species can be treated with a 1:1 ratio of dicamba (Banvel, Clarity) in water instead of triclopyr if desired. As mentioned earlier, the stumps of eastern red cedars do not need to be treated.