In the woods behind Silver Spring’s Long Branch Community Recreation Center, deadly plants grow.
There’s polygonum perfoliatum, a.k.a. “mile-a-minute” — a nonnative invasive plant with a reddish stem that, left to its own devices, can smother other vegetation, said Corinne Stephens, Montgomery County Parks senior natural resources specialist. And Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, or “porcelain berry” — a perennial wild grape transplanted to these shores from Asia that casts out tendrils and can climb more than 20 feet, smothering forests in the D.C. region where there are few predators to threaten its unchecked growth.
