08/07/2026
Have you heard about the plants that were added this year to Michigan's invasive plant list? MDARD, the Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development, announced in May that these four shrubs & trees will be outlawed January 1st, 2028.
🌳Callery Pear (also known as Cleveland pear, Bradford pear, or ornamental pear)
🌿Japanese barberry
🍃Common buckthorn
🌳Glossy buckthorn
This means that you cannot propagate, buy or sell it in the state. Two aquatic plants, water lettuce & water hyacinth, became illegal on June 19, 2026 as they are incredibly destructive to our waterways.
Many times we hear people say, "Well it isn't invasive in MY yard." We understand that you may not see the results, but these plants are truly detrimental to our environment.
Let's use Japanese Barberry as an example.
1) Birds love to eat the seeds and spread them in our waterways. We naturally do not have thorny shrubs beside our rivers, and these keep our native wildlife from being able to benefit from the river's edge.
2) Mice and other small pests love hiding under prickly Japanese barberry because they are safe from birds and other predators. Mice are known to carry all kinds of ticks. Yards with Japanese barberry have a higher black-legged tick count that those without, proven in 2010. If you'd like to read the research you can find it here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22182557/
3) Japanese Barberry forms thickets in dense woods which changes the soil composition and humidity, creating an ideal environment for black-legged tick breeding.
We always want to be conscientious stewards of our land, so we are acting now to keep these plants out of our landscapes. We also guarantee our potted trees and shrubs for three years, and we wouldn't be able to keep that guarantee with the 2028 ban.
If you were planning on adding any of these to your landscape, come see us. We can help find something that will be a wonderful substitution.
Curious what else is on the list? There are many aquatic plants and animals on it, along with Japanese knotweed, autumn olive, giant hogweed, purple loosestrife & phragmites. See the whole list here:
https://www.michigan.gov/invasives/id-report/prohibitedrestricted
