ELBERTA — The massive, but fragile dunes along the Lake Michigan shoreline are under threat from a small, delicate flower commonly known as baby’s breath.
Organizations and volunteers around the region have been working for years to fight the invasive ornamental flower, and they are starting to see positive results in some areas.
For the past 10 years the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy and Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network have been hosting work bee events focused on baby’s breath removal around Empire Beach. This year, they are holding three, the first of which was on June 17.
Audrey Menninga, director of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network, said that the baby’s breath on the dunes “is getting better.” When the two groups first started hosting the removal events in 2016, Elberta Beach “was pretty much just gray because it was all baby’s breath in bloom,” Menninga said.
Now, native beach grass is coming back in and they are seeing milkweed beginning to grow again. Hog-nosed snakes, eagles, monarch caterpillars have also been seen on the beach and Menninga said “it’s been really impactful for these volunteers to be able to see the changes that they’ve been helping to make.”
She said a lot of people can feel overwhelmed with the issues of the world and focusing on the small things might help them realize they can make a big change in a small way.
“If you manage the baby’s breath on (a piece of land), or any invasive species, you’ve made it a little bit healthier for a bee who doesn’t have a whole world that it can go to, it just has a little area, and so now you’ve made it better for that one bee. So every small bit really does help,” she said.
She also said that there are areas where the invasive baby’s breath is not being addressed, “no one is working along the roadsides or in fallow fields, but the baby’s breath populations on the dunes have been getting better!” she said.
But people may be unknowingly contributing to the problem.
Baby’s breath was introduced to the region as an ornamental plant, Menninga said, and the seeds are still sold in stores, often hidden in mixed wildflower seed or pollinator seed packets.
And it really loves sand dunes. In other areas, like along roadsides, the plant is considered to be a weed problem and not a top priority, so people may not be aware of its impact on coastal dunes.
And so, the battle against baby’s breath starts, like most things, with education and awareness. Considering how special and unique the Great Lake dune ecosystems are, Erica DesJardins, volunteer program manager at Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy, said there is not enough public awareness about the baby’s breath problem.
“These beautiful landscapes are a big reason why people visit our region, and the spread of invasive baby’s breath can significantly change the aesthetics of these places in addition to threatening our native species,” DesJardins said.
Two of these native species are flowers that only grow on Great Lakes Coastal dunes and both are considered “threatened” by the state, she said: pitcher thistle, also called dune thistle, and the Lake Huron tansy (which are found on some northern dunes in the region).
The locations chosen for the work bee removal events all have pitcher thistle but the overall health of the dune ecosystem and its climate resilience is also considered, Menninga said. The pitcher thistle is considered threatened by the federal government and “monarchs really love it as a pollination source,” Menninga said.
The threat of monoculture
At the baby’s breath work bees, volunteers are taught how to identify and safely remove the plant. This is a great opportunity for private land owners to educate themselves.
The events are typically held from June through early September, when the plants are up, but before the seeds are out. It’s easiest to recognize when the plant flowers, which is around this time of year.
“Once the seeds start coming out, we really don’t manage it. We don’t want to risk spreading more seeds around the dunes,” Menninga said.
Baby’s breath both outcompetes native plants and alters the ecosystem of the dunes themselves, making it harder for other plants to survive. The plant grows quickly and aggressively. Each of the tiny flowers puts out a seed and the plant is designed to break off at the taproot in the fall, kind of like a tumbleweed, and spread seeds as it rolls down the dune.
With a deep taproot, around 10 feet in length, clusters of the plant can hold the sands of the naturally shifting dunes in place. This stops the sand movement used by many of the native plants to scratch the seed coats in order to sprout, impacting a vital part of their lifecycles.
“Over time these baby’s breath infestations form monocultures, causing the species diversity in these places to drop dramatically, making them more vulnerable to other kinds of disturbance as well,” DesJardins said.
To remove the plant, the taproot needs to be cut off just below where the plant branches out below ground level. If done correctly, the plant will break away fully connected, rather than a dozen or so separate branches.
Full eradication will take years of management, Menninga said, especially since some of these dune ecosystems are privately owned. If landowners aren’t removing their baby’s breath, “sometimes we get respread from private properties,” she said.
But volunteers are a “huge help” in that eradication effort, DesJardins said. Every year they put in hours to dig out invasive plants from several different protected properties, places that the public greatly enjoys visiting and using for recreation, she said.
“The threatened dune thistle is once again abundant on this beach, thanks to the work of past and present volunteers,” DesJardins said.
“This sense of responsibility from our local community to care for our natural spaces is imperative to successful long-term management, and drives home the point that we are all responsible for doing what we can to care for the protected lands we are so lucky to have in our part of the state!”
“The threatened dune thistle is once again abundant on this beach, thanks to the work of past and present volunteers.” Erica DesJardins, volunteer program manager at Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy
If You Go EMPIRE — The Northwestern Michigan Invasive Species Network and Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy are hosting two baby’s breat removal workbees at Elberta Beach Tuesday, July 7 and Saturday, July 25 from 10 a.m.-noon. Shovels and tools will be provided but volunteers are asked to bring their own work gloves. Long pants are recommended to protect from poison ivy. Registration through either organization’s website is appreciated.