I’ve spent several days scanning the Overlook Trail and Montini Preserve properties for the invasive Yellow starthistle (YST). Although it’s still early in its season, it’s clear that it has essentially been eradicated from these two properties. I will still be looking for it this season and next, but I’ve pulled so little so far it seems nearly pointless. After over a decade of fighting this scourge, I expected to be able to celebrate this major accomplishment.

But I can’t. 

As clear as it is to me that Yellow starthistle is a problem of the past for us, it’s also clear that in the very same meadows where starthistle thrived, it has already been replaced by Italian thistle. And Italian thistle is far, far worse. First, it grows absolutely everywhere. YST only grows in sunlit meadows, which afforded us a chance to fully eradicate it. Second, Italian thistle grows in dense thickets that generate tens of thousands of seeds. These thickets are extremely hard to eradicate by pulling, which has been our strategy with YST.

I’m even begun to suspect that by pulling the YST and disturbing the soil, we even enhanced the ability of Italian thistle to find purchase in new areas.

Today while finding very few YST plants, I took a picture of a lone YST plant in a dense thicket of Italian thistle (see pic). This isn’t even our future, it’s our present, and it sucks.

So yes, we won the battle of YST while losing the war to Italian thistle. Today is not a day to celebrate. Instead, tomorrow I will renew our efforts to keep Italian thistle away from hikers. That’s the best we can do.