Roadside Life a Cruel One for Plants

by Evelyn Boswell

BOZEMAN -- It could have been the summer from heck -- driving 10,000 miles around Montana, stopping to examine every kind of plant that grew along the road.

"It was nuts. By the end of the summer, I lost all my social skills. I carried on long conversations with my car," says Gretchen Ann Meier, adjunct instructor of biology at Montana State University-Bozeman

Meier, working on a 3 1/2-year project for the Montana Department of Transportation, said she actually enjoyed the summer of 1993 when she started her fieldwork. Traveling alone in a car worth less than the money she earned in mileage, she developed a great appreciation for Montana and its diversity.

"I met some wonderful people -- funny, funny, happy people that had funny, odd ways of looking at the world," Meier remarked.

She also gathered some valuable information for the people who manage the roadsides of Montana's interstates and primary roads. The Montana Department of Transportation wanted Meier to identify native plants that would be suitable for the roadsides and weeds that could be troublesome. Managers trying to reclaim the roadsides in their area could then refer to Meier's study to find out what vegetation would be best for the soil, rainfall, topography and temperature.

Meier's study, titled "The Colonization of Montana Roadsides by Native and Exotic Plants," is available at public libraries around the state.

"The Montana Department of Transportation manages over 6,600 miles of road throughout the state," Meier explained in the study that became her master's thesis. "Adjacent roadsides are managed for driver safety, to provide effective maintenance and for emergency parking. Roadside managers seek to stabilize soil, exclude weeds, minimize maintenance and provide an aesthetic view."

With that as the goal, Meier found that life along the road is no picnic for Montana's vegetation. The ground is packed down. Plants are mowed and sprayed with herbicides and pesticides. They're coated with salt from icy roads. Salt makes it hard for plants to maintain their water balance, and nutrients leach out of them instead of into them.

"It's a pretty awful place. It's highly disturbed," Meier said of some of the roadsides she saw.

The roadsides in eastern Montana are well covered with vegetation, but western Montana has had a hard time establishing park-like roadsides because the soil there is rockier and the roadsides are steeper, Meier continued.

Across the state, Meier found 211 varieties of plants growing in the 370 plots she established along the roads. Slightly more than half of the 50 species that occurred with any regularity were native to Montana. The others were exotic species in the form of noxious weeds or vegetation that had been deliberately planted.

Among the native species, the three most common grasses she found were western wheatgrass, needle and thread grass, and green needle grass, Meier said. The most prevalent native non-grass plants were fringed sage, silver sage and big sagebrush.

Among the exotic species, the most common grasses were Kentucky bluegrass, crested wheatgrass and smooth brome. The most frequent noxious weeds were spotted knapweed, cheat grass and kochia.

"While some exotic species are useful for management, they may have undesirable impacts on the stability of roadside vegetation," Meier cautioned. "Exotic species should be used with care to minimize the impacts on adjacent farm or range land. Especially invasive noxious weeds can never be recommended for revegetation."

Exotic grasses like Kentucky bluegrass are beautiful and can establish themselves quickly, Meier continued. They can, however, move into rangeland and ultimately reduce the diversity in an area.

Native species, on the other hand, can lower the cost of maintaining roadside vegetation, Meier said. They can discourage weed infestation. In 1994, President Clinton told federal agencies to use native plants for landscaping to minimize the adverse effects on natural habitats.

Meier completed the roadside project in 1996 and received the Gary Lynch Award for her work. The award is given by the biology department at MSU-Bozeman in memory of Lynch, a graduate student who was killed in a car accident in the 1970s. Meier's work was funded by the Montana Department of Transportation and the MSU-Bozeman biology department.

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