CANFIELD – My parents owned a seasonal cottage in the rural hills near a state park lake. The cabin was primarily in the woods but bordered the edge of a field that had many wildflowers and grasses. While summer was a wonderful time at the cabin, my favorite season there was the fall.

Hiking on the trails at the state park or behind our cabin without the thick humidity and mosquitoes allowed me to enjoy all the beauty of nature instead of sweating and swatting. The gorgeous colors of the burr oak, sugar maples and Ohio buckeye leaves on the hillsides and reflecting in the water were breathtaking.

In the fall the berries, nuts, and seeds would begin to appear, and we would spend our weekends cutting and gathering these natural materials to dry and use in flower arrangements and garlands for the house.

We would gather pinecones, harvest milkweed pods once the seeds had dispersed and cut brown seed heads left by the many wildflowers and grasses. My favorite berries to collect were the orange bittersweet growing in the shrubs and trees along the roadside and the gorgeous red rosehips, which we would hang to dry.

I have such wonderful memories of exploring nature and designing and crafting with my family. However, with age, experience and Master Gardener and Volunteer Naturalist training, my perspective of these memories has changed. Plants that I had known and valued as wildflowers and seed pods and used extensively in wreaths, garlands and arrangements were often non-native plants now found on the Ohio invasive species list.

Some of the invasive species I hold in my heart, but no longer in my creative hand, include Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), multifora rose (Rosa multiflora Thunb.), common teasel (Dipsacus fullonum) and dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis).

Now I ask myself how much I contributed to the spread of these plants into a wider range by transporting and disposing of them across county lines.

I was reminded of this again recently when I pulled one of my favorite references off the shelf. It is a wonderful book about finding and gathering pods in the field, which includes pictures of the flowering plant, its dried pods and a sample dried flower arrangement. There were many of my old friends listed in this book as well as many of my more recent nemeses like garlic mustard, purple loosestrife, narrow-leaved cattail and wild parsnip.

Now I am left with my memories but will keep updated copies of the invasive species lists in all my field guides.

To learn more about invasives in Ohio, go to https://go.osu.edu/invasives

Sheila Cubick is an Ohio State University Extension Master Gardener Volunteer in Mahoning County.