If you’ve walked along roadsides, trails, or riverbanks in Vermont lately, you may have noticed tall plants with large clusters of white flowers towering overhead. While impressive in size and appearance, not all of these plants are created equal. Two species in particular—cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum) and giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum)—often get mistaken for one another.

Managing invasive plants is an important part of caring for our landscapes, whether you're maintaining a backyard, forest, or park. Once you've taken the time to remove these plants, it's just as important to dispose of the plant material properly to avoid accidental spread.

Emerald ash borer (EAB) is now established in many parts of Vermont, and communities across the state are seeing the impacts—especially declining or dying ash trees. Without intervention, EAB will kill the vast majority of ash. However, when detected early, there are effective ways to protect individual trees.

As gardening season gets underway, Vermonters are encouraged to inspect plants and outdoor items for signs of the spotted lanternfly, an agricultural pest not currently established in Vermont.

VTinvasives.org is being updated to improve user experience and provide the most useful and relevant information on invasive plants and pests. This survey will help determine which resources are most valuable and where improvements are needed. Please take a few minutes to share your feedback—your input is essential in shaping the updates that will be made to the site. The survey has 6 questions and should take less than 5 minutes to complete. 

After several seasons of thorough sampling, Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) scientists, consultants, and local partners have detected zebra mussels in United States (US) waters at Lake Memphremagog.

When a volunteer pulled a suspicious clam from the lakebed in Whitehall, New York, as part of a routine monitoring program last month, they immediately reported the find to lake scientists. Further analysis confirmed the first known occurrence of invasive golden clam (Corbicula fluminea) in Lake Champlain.

The clam, which is native to the eastern Mediterranean and Asia, can crowd out native species and increase occurrences of cyanobacteria blooms.

Wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius), also commonly known as wine raspberry, dewberry, and Japanese raspberry, is a perennial, deciduous shrub that is a member of the rose family (Rosaceae) and shares many characteristics of its close relatives in the genus Rubus, such as raspberries and blackberries. Like raspberry, wineberry has silvery underleaves, a fruit core that remains on the stem when the ripe fruit is picked, and thorns. It is differentiated from other similar species by the fine red hairs that grow densely on its stems and flowers, giving the plant a reddish hue. Its fruit is edible, sweet and somewhat tart, and is a sought- after ingredient in many baking and cocktail recipes.