6-26-2019 Manvine

One of the native plants here at the farm is what we call manvine. The more common names are "old man in the ground" and "man root" so named because of the man-sized root that this plant produces. The daily growth of the vine on a well-established plant is amazing. You can just about see it grow. These pictures are taken in the Buffer Swamp CREP stand. We had thinning done earlier this spring, and just a couple of months later, all of the downed trees are covered in manvine. The leaves are huge! It's a challenge to get through it to limb the downed trees and cut into firewood.