Camphor tree pest

[Tropheus76]

The camphor is the pest. I was wandering around a corner area I am turning into a butterfly garden with a few fruit trees and native grasses mixed in, mostly so I have less lawn to mow. Along the front of the yard I have a hedgerow of saw palmetto which is 5-7 feet tall and about as wide running along my side of a ditch. Right in the middle of it I noticed a camphor tree popping up above the saw palmetto. I would rather not chop my way into the saw palmetto seeing as it takes a very long time to grow. Would brush remover spray targetted just on the camphor kill it? I know they are notoriously hard to get rid of. I also know if I dont get rid of it, it will get large enough to shade out everything else in that corner of the yard in a fairly quick order.

[Coconut Cream]

Chainsaw that beast down. It's cheaper to do it now than after waiting for it to become treezilla 

[Tropheus76]

It will come back from the roots. Thats the problem with camphors, they are more persistent than crape myrtles. I have dug others in my yard up before and they have extensive root systems. This one is in the middle of a saw palmetto hedgerow. It still has a green trunk which is making me think it will absorb the brush killer through its trunk as well as its leaves. I know the brush killer wont bother the saw palms.

[Coconut Cream]

Just pay a stump grinder to obliterate the root system. That's what I ended up doing and it was absolutely worth it. There's a mango tree there now 

[Tropheus76]

Again, I cant get to the roots without chopping through a hedgerow of saw palm which I would prefer not to do. I guess a bird dropped a seed smack dab in the center of a5ish foot wide row of palm that acts as my front fence for the yard. Saw palmetto grows an inch a year so cutting it isnt really an option since it will be a few decades for it to grow back to a somewhat decent fill for the hole.

[Epicatt2]

Tropheus,

Were I in your same situation with a camphor tree invading a hedgerow of palmettos, what I'd do would be to spread some barrier cloth/paper/tarp/etc. over the palmettos as a protection for them and then give that camphor tree a good shot of RoundUp (or similar) –on a dry, windless day. 

The RoundUp should do in the camphor tree down to its roots yet the palmettos will have been protected from the RoundUp by you having covered them well during the spraying of the intrusive sapling tree.

Once the camphor sapling has died you can prune its trunk down even with top of or just below the level of the palmetto leaves. The remainder of the dead stem will eventually disintegrate.

OK — HTH

Paul M.
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