BANGOR DAILY NEWS • June 11, 2024
There are a lot of reasons to want to control the non-native plants that have invaded the state of Maine. But scientific research done on Japanese barberry adds one more big one to the list: the dense, thorny shrub actually creates a microclimate that is good for ticks. And that is bad news for people. “There are places in southern Maine where barberry has completely taken over the understory of the forest,” said Susan Elias, a research associate at the Lyme and Vector-Borne Disease Laboratory at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute.