To the editor:

It’s tansy ragwort time.

Bainbridge Island has an especially healthy crop of this state-designated noxious weed. It is that cheerful yellow flower popping up along the side of the road and in fields.

The reason the state decided to add this non-native plant to the noxious weed list is its toxicity to live stock, especially horses and cows, but also sheep and goats. If eaten, it can cause an animal to die. While most of us don’t own livestock, we have friends and neighbors who do.

People can consume these toxins through honey from bees that have collected pollen from tansy ragwort or milk from animals that have consumed tansy ragwort. The seeds of the tansy ragwort are spread by the wind. They don’t stop at the nearest fence or property line.

I encourage everyone, including the city, to make sure your property is tansy ragwort free.

The seeds will continue to mature and plants will continue to produce new flowers when they are cut or mowed so pull the entire plant and place it in a plastic bag in your regular garbage.

Continue to monitor and pull new sprouts. All parts of the plant remain toxic once pulled which makes it inappropriate for composting.

Dana Coggon is Kitsap County’s Noxious Weed Program Coordinator. Dana has a seasonal staff of just four to fulfill the mandate of state law to control all of the state listed noxious weeds throughout the whole county.

They need our help. Pulling one weed a day in your area will help keep millions of seeds and thus, toxic and invasive plants out of our landscape.

The Noxious Weed Program can provide bags and will arrange for pick-up and disposal of more than five. Contact them at dcog

gon@co.kitsap.wa.us for bags or to report problem areas in your neighborhood.

Follow the program on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kitsap.weeds for daily updates and information on other plant invaders around the county.

WENDY WESTERLUND

Bainbridge Island Representative

Kitsap County Noxious Weed Board