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It’s National Invasive Species Awareness Week! Each day this week we’ll highlight an invasive species that we struggle with here in Camden County.

Today’s plant is another landscape escapee – elephant ear or wild taro. Elephant ear loves wet, soggy soil (which we have a lot of) and will readily invade streams, wetlands, marshy shores, and drainage ditches to establish dense thickets. Elephant ear shades out or chokes out native vegetation, and clogs wetlands and drainage ditches contributing to flooding and stormwater problems. If you have this plant, please get rid of it! If you have questions about this plant, how to get rid of it, or what to replace it with please contact me at 912-576-3219 or jkwarren@uga.edu.

Elephant Ear (Xanthosoma sagittiforlium) - introduced to the US from Northern South America. Big leaves and ability to grow up to 9 feet tall can shade out many native plants.