Have you seen this tree?If you are like me, you may have never realized it was a non-native, highly invasive “weed” that displaces Florida’s natural flora and landscaping.
Recently, the Association has started removing the smaller trees we come across, as they can be taken out by hand. We do have a couple of larger trees which will merit more attention in the near future.
Carrotwood is an evergreen tree native to Australia, Indonesia, and New Guinea. It is a slender tree usually with a single trunk that has dark gray outer bark covering inner bark that is often orange in color. Birds, particularly fish crows, are the primary animal dispersal agents of carrotwood seeds, which they ingest and later deposit a considerable distance from parent plants.
Carrotwood is listed as a Category 1 invasive exotic in Florida, capable of altering native plant communities by displacing native species and changing community structures or ecological functions. Spoil Islands, beach dunes, hammocks, marshes, mangrove and cypress habitats, scrub, coastal prairies and coastal strand are among the Florida coastal natural habitats susceptible to invasion by this species. Once it invades a new area, Cupaniopsis anacardioides can crowd out and out-compete native vegetation to form dense stands of carrotwood trees.
Cupaniopsis anacardioides (aka carrotwood) can alter the community structure of native plant communities, e.g., mangrove marsh, and negative economic as well as ecological impacts are probable.
To minimize impacts, the plant was added to the DACS Florida Noxious Weed List in 1999. Plants on the Florida Noxious Weed List, including carrotweed, may not be introduced, possessed, moved, or released without a permit.
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