Is that what the pattern usually is with ivy, Sophie?

I think so.

I mean, that's what this looks like.

But yeah, ivy is a climber, so it'll climb over everything and it can just smother the species on the ground and then it can climb up into the canopy.

And, you know, talking about how we're going to control it, the first most important thing that you do is that you just cut the vines at the base of the tree.

a lot of people then think you have to pull down the Ivy, but even just cutting the, the roots and letting everything on the top of the tree die can relieve a tree of over 2000 pounds of water weight because that's all going to die and evaporate.

So if you have Ivy in your yard and it's climbing up trees and you, you know, only have a little bit of time to deal with it, the best thing that you can do is just try to cut it from around the base and so that the stuff that has grown up into the tree dies and then if further down the line you're doing a wildfire evaluation or something you should consider all that dead ivy as ladder fuel for fires and you might want to consider trying to pull it down and removing it but it will just cutting it at the base will kill everything on the top of the tree.

So you were telling me like 50% of our invasive species started as landscape plants?

So what is the primary role of the weed board?

So the weed board has three arms.

The first one is outreach and education.

So coming to people's homes and doing site visits and helping them determine what weeds they have and how to deal with them.

You might find us tabling at the farmer's market or fair or, you know, various events around the county.

Our door is also always open at the WSU extension office.

if you have questions or you want to bring plant samples.

So what are those generally?

[laughs]

... with plenty of obnoxious weeds.

And ultimately, a weed is somewhere you don't want it to be, so a weed is a very subjective term.

But noxious weed is a, a legal definition at the state level.

In Washington's revised code, Chapter 1710, you can read all about the noxious weed laws, and they outline, um, a list of weeds that are particularly invasive.

They're non-native, invasive, and harmful to either humans or animals or ecosystems or recreational opp- opportunities or timber or whatever it may be.

And so noxious weeds are just, like, I think there's over 100 on the list.

So what are those generally?