Scotch Doom

Every year by mid-spring, you see them erupting all over the KP and surrounding area: the golden flowers that bedazzle.

A couple of years ago, I took note of them as we were driving back from Gig Harbor. There were patches all over that little wedge-shaped no-man’s land between State Route 16 and Purdy Drive. Growing all along the Purdy Spit; eventually, they’ll block the view of the water. There were clumps throughout the twists and turns of Wauna, everywhere on SR 302. There was a nice big section at 94th NW and adorning the Smoky Bear sign across from Gateway Park, like a shiny half-halo. We passed a whole wall of them in the run down to Key Center, like festive frozen sparklers. And of course, a whole ecosystem of gold across from the Red Barn, exploding, extending through swathes of the clear-cut, choking out any other vegetal life like a lemon-hued version of the poppy fields from "The Wizard of Oz." It’s like a yellow surf, crashing along the road, a slow-motion invasion. By July 5 this year, I could again see the black seed pods among the blooms.

Yes, I’m talking about Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius), a non-regulated Class B noxious weed first listed in Washington in 1988. An evergreen shrub brought from Europe to here, where it doesn’t belong. Why not? Because, according to the Washington State Noxious Weed Control Board, “It displaces native and beneficial plants, causing loss of grassland and open forest” and “aggressively spreads to form monocultures, replacing desirable forage grasses and young trees.”

The invader shrub can grow up to 10 feet, and I’ve seen some whoppers. At a friend’s property in Jefferson County, she showed me what she called an “old-growth Scotch broom.” Gnarled, towering over us, it looked like something out of a Guillermo del Toro movie.

The plant is a bully: it chemically suppresses native plants, outgrowing and starving out tree seedlings so that clear-cuts never have a chance to regrow back into forests of hemlock, red cedar, Douglas fir. Instead, they turn into forests of Scotch-broom-and-nothing-else. Those black hard seedpods hold seeds that persist in the soil for 60 years or more. Once it takes hold in a landscape, the “broomtop” is hard to eliminate — as I can attest, having whacked away at its tough trunk with axe and machete and shears.

Not that we’re under any obligation to do so. “Non-regulated” pretty much means that neither public entities nor private landowners are required to control infestations of Class B noxious weeds, i.e. invasive species that have been here so long and have grown so widespread that the state has basically thrown up its hands. It’s a tragedy of the commons and of private property.

But is it a tragedy? I get the sense that most people don’t care or might even find the blooms pretty. As one botanist told me, people come to the Key Peninsula to recreate and “get in touch with nature,” so they just see these beautiful golden flowers and sigh. They don’t perceive them as an issue, even though “nature” didn’t put those blooms there, humans (more precisely, white people) did — and not even all that long ago.

Maybe we on the KP should care about Scotch broom, though. Why? Well, for one thing, non-native grasses in Hawaii made the 2021 wildfire that destroyed the historic town of Lahaina much worse, according to a Maui government report. The invasives, through neglect and mismanagement, functioned as “combustible, rapidly burning fuels.” Could Scotch broom, which burns more intensely than other plants, play a similar exacerbating role in a KP wildfire disaster?

Last year, I posed that question to a couple of land experts who came to inspect our property.

“I worry that we’re going to have a massive fire,” I said. “It’s going to be worse because of the Scotch broom, and only then, when it’s too late, will people come to realize why it might have been worth controlling a little better.”

“I hope you’re wrong, but it could happen,” they replied, chuckling. They added that research on Scotch broom shows it wouldn’t necessarily be any worse in terms of flammability than natives like evergreen huckleberry, especially in a drought. If I really want to protect my home from a wildfire, one said, “you should do something about the moss on your roof.” Touché.

“I’m just saying,” I replied, sheepishly, “that if we do have a big fire and we need a scapegoat, I’d rather it be an invasive.”

A friend at a local environmentalist organization, who spends more time outdoors than anyone I know, told me, “Honestly, José, I think chemical control is the way we’re going to deal with Scotch broom at this point, in a lot of places, like these big areas that have been logged and not sprayed. Because they’re just overrun. And you’re looking at generations and generations of human-powered effort to make it so dense.”

However, some folks resist chemical/herbicidal solutions to this problem — ironically, it’s often those tree-hugging, purist environmentalists.

I say let’s make it a social event. When naturalist and KP News writer Chris Rurik had a recent birthday, he invited friends to donate a couple of hours of labor cutting down Scotch broom in lieu of gifts. Our own Carolyn Wiley, in her June 2020 KP News column, had a similar idea, suggesting that we deal with the “golden horde” by making April “Scotch Broom Eradication Month” on the Key. Her catchy tagline: “Pull Your Own Weight — in Scotch Broom.”

But why wait ’til April? Get cutting now.

Alternatively, I have a modest proposal: with so many visitors coming here to see the pretty gold blooms, we should just rename this place the Cytisus Scoparius Peninsula.

Yeah, not much of a ring to it.

José Alaniz is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies (adjunct) at U.W. He lives blissfully with his wife and many animals in Longbranch.