Town of Howard to spray for wild chervil
By LeAnn R. Ralph
TOWN OF HOWARD — The Howard Town Board has approved spraying three miles of town road right-of-way at a total cost of about $300 to kill off the invasive plant called wild chervil.
The Howard Town Board approved hiring Eric Suvada to do the spraying at the town board’s May 3 meeting.
Suvada reported that he had sprayed two test spots the previous Saturday and that the chemical he had used appeared to have killed the patches of wild chervil.
The danger with wild chervil, because it spreads so rapidly and adapts well to sun or shade, dry or wet conditions, is that it chokes out all other plants.
If wild chervil were to invade a pasture or a hay field, everything else growing in the pasture or hay field would be choked out, and the landowner would have to treat the soil to kill the wild chervil seeds and then would have to start over again seeding in the pasture or hay field.
Even though wild chervil does not blister the skin like wild parsnip, it spreads twice as fast as wild parsnip and is becoming a problem in eastern Dunn County and western Chippewa County.
Representatives of the Lower Chippewa Valley Invasives Partnership and Lee Shambeau of 4 Control out of Menomonie held an informational meeting about wild chervil in Tilden in March.
All together, three miles of road right-of-way amounts to nearly five acres, Suvada told the town board at the May 3 meeting.
The cost for chemical to spray both sides of the road is about $48 per mile, and the cost to spray is $55 per hour, he said.
Spraying three miles of right-of-way will take about three hours, Suvada said.
The three miles that have been targeted would be the worst of the wild chervil infestation in the Town of Howard, he said.
The Wisconsin Invasive Plants Reporting and Prevention website describes wild chervil as “a biennial or short-lived perennial plant of the parsley family. Seedlings develop into a rosette during the first year. In the second year, the plants produce hollow flower stems, usually 3-4 feet tall (can reach 6 feet). The stems are branched and covered in soft hairs, particularly near the base. The leaves are alternate, nearly hairless, and divided into smaller, fernlike leaflets. The base of each leaf surrounds the stem. Tiny, white flowers with 5 notched petals bloom from late May to early July of the second year. Individual flower stems form a small cluster. The flowers of several of these small umbels together form a larger umbel resembling an umbrella. The thick taproot of wild chervil has lateral buds at the top of the root which allow for resprouting. The taproot of mature plants may be up to 6 feet deep.”
Other plants, such as wild carrot or Queen Anne’s lace can resemble wild chervil.
Wild chervil is impossible to control by mowing the right-of-way because the plant seeds out early in the growing season, and by the time road crews are able to mow the right-of-way, the wild chervil seeds end up being spread around by the mowing equipment.
The Howard Town Board unanimously approved hiring Suvada to spray three miles of town road right-of-way.
Vernon Schindler serves as chair of the Howard Town Board, along with Supervisor I Todd Wanish and Supervisor II Dennis Dvoracek.
