Bush Honeysuckle an unwelcome visitor at Jefferson Memorial Forest

 

Bush Honeysuckle is an invasive plant that can be found at the Welcome Center and Tom Wallace areas of Jefferson Memorial Forest.

By Carl Suk, Land Manager

Jefferson Memorial Forest
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Of all the exotic invasive plants are the honeysuckles of the genus Lonicera. Bush Honeysuckle is no doubt one of the most troublesome. Honeysuckles belong to the family Caprifoliacea. There are four species of the shrub form and one vine type that are of most concern in Kentucky. The most common of the bush honeysuckles in this area is the Amur Honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii.

Preferring full sun, they tend to favor forest edges, disturbed areas, old agricultural fields, abandoned railroad right of ways and roadside edges. Honeysuckles are extremely adaptable to many different climates and soils, especially calcareous soils. Their vigorous growth can in part be attributed to the lack of natural biological controls such as herbivores, insects and diseases. Eventually they will spread throughout the forest, completely dominating the lower canopy. One study indicated that the rate of spread can be as much as a half-mile per year.

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Downtown’s Memorial Park a marriage of public art and vision

Memorial Park in downtown Louisville is a great example of increasing awareness of public lands through art.

By Katey Perry, Metro Parks Community Relations Intern
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Art is unique in that is capable of bringing many different people together in a common place. It has been utilized all around the city to create different feels, from coffee shops to parks. Memorial Park in downtown Louisville is one great example of this. Back in the early 1990’s it was an underutilized park with high cement retention walls and a very low visit rate. The art students at Spalding University, with the aid and guidance of Joyce Ogden, decided to change this.

In 1995, an art class at Spalding went to Metro Parks with an idea to reclaim Memorial Park —  and to revive it. Because the park was barely used they thought that by holding public art classes there they could bring more people back to the park. They developed a proposal after spending an entire semester researching the history of the park through various articles and documents they found. While in this process they also formed a survey for residents within a one block radius to see how many of them actually used the park and what changes would make the park a more likely hotspot.

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