Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 3.2
The Barberry Eradication Campaign in the US involved careful, documented annual
resurveys of farmsteads from which barberry had been removed. This so-called L survey card
from the eradication campaign in Whitman County, Washington illustrates the methodical year-
by-year assessment of barberry occurrences on each inspected property. Any property on which
barberry was detected within five years of all shrubs' removal was surveyed for an additional five
years (Whitman County Barberry Eradication Program, 1943-1978)
Plants that escaped detection have now had about 50 years in which to grow and
reproduce. These plants are still however sufficiently rare and that stem rust is
uncommon, admittedly in part through the subsequent development of rust-resist-
ant varieties of wheat (Leonard 2001). Nevertheless, European barberry has been
reduced to a rarity, such that the most comprehensive modern treatment of the Great
Plains flora does not even list
B. vulgaris
(Barkley et al. 1986).
3.3.2 Eradication Campaign Against Berberis vulgaris
in the Pacific Northwest: Its Long-Term Effect
The US Barberry Eradication Program launched in 1918 did not initially encom-
pass all cereal growing regions; much wheat has long been grown in the Pacific
Northwest, east of the Cascade Range (Meinig 1968). Wheat in this region did not
escape stem rust attack, and by the mid-1940s, the U.S.D.A. extended barberry
eradication to Washington state (Busdicker 1946). Similar to the central US, the
topographic relief varies: rolling hills that once supported native steppe had been
