I live in Victoria, BC and am volunteering for a nature sanctuary. Some british fool brought some European Daphne over to plant in their garden and now it's taking over the entire sanctuary. I've been charged with the mission of clearing it out of a rather large tract of land. I'm wondering if anyone knows whether Daphne is a strong enough plant that I'll actually have to manually tear each one out by the roots, or whether severing them all with a weed-whacker will do the trick. Any thoughts?
Don't know. Over here, they usually die from an assortment of aphid-spread virus infections after a couple of years, and are very difficult to grow. So maybe biological control (i.e., introduce the viruses) is the way to go.
I assume you are talking about Daphne laureola. That is the one that seems to be a problem here. I would think cutting off at the base would kill it, but I don't really know. This site cautions against using weed-whackers or brush cutters. Apparently the irritating/poisonous compounds are released into the air when cutting. http://www.racerocks.com/pearson/ecology/restore/introdspecies.htm (paragraphs 5-7) Hard to believe Michael, I know, but this daphne seeds itself everywhere here and changes the soil chemistry, inhibiting native plants. Other daphnes are hard to grow here as they are everywhere else.