I took out a couple hundred leaf bags full here. And then the HOA send me a nasty letter about loving native plants and all. The previous owners were clearly not gardeners. Nor the HOA members. ;-)

After cutting it down, cut the stump to the ground and give it a good spray with Round Up. You may have to go back over it with the round up a few times, but stick with it. Besides it doesn't take but a few minutes once a week to spray the Round Up where needed.

According to some forestry sites I visit, you have to spray the stump within minutes of cutting down the tree. So have your bottle of Round Up with you when you cut.

We have the same problem here with privet (also a small leaved evergreen). Use an herbicide for "woody" plants. Not "weed be gone" but "brush be gone". Or Roundup has a new product for woody plants.

As the others said, make fresh cuts and apply immediately. Be sure to get the chemical on the outer edges of the woody growth, that is the actively growing layer between the bark and the heart wood.

I tried to fight some yaupon today.....I am hoping the roundup will work. The more yaupon I cut down the more I realize there aren't as many trees as I thought. These things are HUGE!!!! I think I am going to rent a chainsaw from home depot and see if I can't get throught this a little faster.
The land was previously farmed by my Great Grandfather and his family before him. So there are some beautiful old Oak trees in what was previously the fence line. Hopefully, if I survive this project, :) we will be able to see the trees and their awesome beauty. Today I found the old chicken house, a watering trough (not sure if thats how you spell it), and a few of the original fence posts! Its been a great day. And what a feeling to know the person who last worked with these things was someone I never met but is related to me. :) I love the outdoors!!!

I hope you don't cut them all out. Yaupon is a wonderful woodland shrub and understory tree, and the berries are great food for your birds. Maybe leave a few that are manageable? Males won't sprout new seedlings, but I still would like to see you leave some females for the birds to enjoy.

Even though weedy, yaupon is a native shrub and it not considered "invasive". I have cleared out three acres of Chinese privet that was smothering my yaupon, that's what I call invasive. Back in presettlement times, periodic forest fires kept them under control. Since we seldom have forest fires anymore you could say that we have made the yaupon into a problem. But if you absolutely must get rid of them , I'd say to paint full strength Brush-B-Gone® on the stumps after cutting.

Thanks for all your wonderful tips!! Only time will tell if the stuff is really gone! :)

Debndal~ The yaupon here is so thick you cannot even walk through it. I always try to leave plants for the wildlife--even had a wildlife bioligist out to see what could be left to keep the animals happy and not destroy their habitat. He told us that yaupon is good for the birds and the deer, but this is so thick thy can't even get through it. Which I had noticed....they cannot fly through the branches. Anyways, since clearing out a lot of it--the birds are still fluttering about and the deer still have enough of the stuff around to eat.
So all in all--I'm happy and the animals are happy! I'm sure the makers of brush b gone are happy to as much of it as I have bought!!!! :)

I am waging war against Privet. When we cut it, we immediately spray the stump with "Tordon" which we get from the Farmer's Co-op. This stops re-sprouting!!

Definitely buy a chainsaw! You'll be able to cut quickly and easily. After cutting you can immediately spray the stump, or what I do is wait for resprouts and cut them off then spray the bits that are left, or just spray them while they are small. It will take repeated treatments to kill the stump, but if you are spraying only the sprouts it doesn't take a lot of chemical. This minimizes any bad impacts on your garden and lowers the cost for chemicals.

I have been killing yaupon for many years on our 10 acres in northwest Florida. It is not easy. After I cut It I chip and shred it for mulch. A chainsaw is possible but (I have three of them) the yaupon is so tough it tends to throw the chain. Be sure to tighten your chain and have plenty of room for a clean cut. This stuff is nasty!

oh I hate this junk. You can go at it with brute force like with a chainsaw, but you would probably be better off looking for a chemical solution so that you can prevent it from coming back as well!

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How is yaupon invasive????? It's native.

In a managed garden it makes a lovely tree--if it's thinned to just a few specimens. The seedlings are easy to pull.

In areas that are foresty/scrubby, like much of central Texas, the canopy stays open and doesn't form a true forest, and yaupon is naturally thick. Which is great for natural areas and not so great for gardening in which people actually walk through...

You folks should be sent to Landscaping Jail! :)

1. Yaupon is beautiful.
2. Yaupon is evergreen.
3. Yaupon is THE major food source around here that sustains the dwindling bird populations.
4. I can walk through a thick Yaupon underbrush (with some ducking and contorting, of course).
5. Yaupon provides awesome visual and noise screen.
6. Yaupon is better adapted to these parts than every non-native species - Yaupon tolerates heat and drought like few others.
7. Yaupon maximizes the bio-load and combats ecological issues.
8. It's native, folks, native - for a reason!

@ s8us89ds:
You can have all my yaupon..Let me tell you what it did to me..
Our home was affected by the big fires here in Bastrop county last year. We didn't lose our home but we lost every oak tree we had behind our home, because of the yaupon holly that surrounded them. We didn't know any better and didn't expect a forest fire but this stuff is noxious here in Bastrop. Yes, it's native but I don't care, it goes. Because yaupon is so flammable it basically ruined all the oak trees. To make matters worse, the dang stuff that burned is growing back! The stuff was so thick you absolutely couldn't walk through it.

Yaupon (and Gallberry) is adapted to being burned periodically, which is why they typically grow in pine forests, not among hardwoods.

I admit I have cut down quiet a bit of Yaupon and wax myrtle in my woods, but I always leave a few scattered for the birds.

Had the same problem with Chinese Tallow Trees. We hired a guy with a dozer and knocked those suckers down!...roots and all ...and burned them up. That is the end of the Chinese Tallow trees. We are about to do the same with the Yaupon, though they are not as invasive as the Tallow. Good luck!

Yaupon are NATIVE and they sustain wildlife. Don't you guys read any native gardening stuff? They recommend Yaupon and Wax Myrtle over all the non-native stuff. Yaupon is drought-tolerant, heat-tolerant, bad-soil-tolerant, shade-tolerant. It's fantastic. I'm planting MORE Yaupon on my property. Did I mention that they're evergreen? I see no downside to Yaupon.

Wow! "Back off"?! I didn't see anything nasty at all in here. Just differing opinions. The differing opinions ARE helpful. I didn't take any of the comments as being critical. Some people see criticism if someone else has a different opinion and doesn't agree with them. My way or the highway. Oh well.

For what it is worth, it's true the yaupon holly is native, and is not "invasive" as others have pointed out. Invasive plants are those not native to Florida and that displace our native plants and wildlife. However, this is semantics in this particular post.

Yaupon holly does NOT belong close to a structure and should be a minimum of 30 feet away, particularly in fire prone areas. Farther away is better. Any hollies on my property are 100 feet (or more) away from structures. So depending on how close any of the contributors here have hollies growing, they certainly are justified in taking them out.

They also have the right to choose what is growing on their property, but everyone has the responsibility to clear and/or not plant invasive plants, trees, or shrubs brought from other areas.

Frankly, with the exceptions of a few antique roses, camellias, daylilies, or edible fruits and vegetables, I don't plant or grow anything other than native species. I like the native plants and have seen beautiful landscapes filled with them.

The yaupon suckers are easy to get rid of from around the trees if they are paid attention to. I don't poison them. I just clip them off. I imagine they can also be dug up and transplanted somewhere else or given away. If I had a problematic growth that insisted on growing to close to my home, I would then resort to a brush or stump killer. Once those are used nothing else will grow there for some time.

Birds love the hollies, but they also love flowering dogwoods. There are pleasing native trees and shrubs that our native wildlife enjoy and need, without someone having one on their property they do not like or enjoy.

Sandy,
An earlier poster said "You folks should all be sent to Landscaping jail." And later asked "Don't you guys read any native gardening stuff?" Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but those comments didn't seem necessary or helpful. Anyone who is on this forum clearly does read at least some "native gardening stuff" and is here hoping to learn more.

Martha

Last year I tried to purchase some yaupon hollies for my Long Island garden. Couldn't find any. I need to see how my plants faired during this winter but if I still wanted some where would I look?

Some of the southeastern native nurseries may have them.

I have bought several plants from a local place called Dodd's Natives and Mail Order Natives from FL.

If you can't get yaupons then dahoon hollies are a good yet slightly smaller alternative.

Thanks jcalhoun!

You're welcome.

The salient point in all the above is that the native, attractive, and beneficial Yaupon holly behaves differently now that fire is supressed than it did before Euro-settlement. We may have reasons to occassionally remove some of it because, after all, it's former controlling factor has been largely eliminated.

While I'm in Wisconsin, I've seen what fire suppression has done to large tracts of pine flatwoods in S. Florida. It's a crying shame. Add in the invasive (And non-native) Malaleuca, and you've got an ecological disaster.

I think the OP did want to do things that are helpful to birds and other wildlife in her yard. And while I'm no expert on southern US vegetation communities, it sounds like perhaps human activities have helped Yaupon holly more than hurt it, once again with the fire suppression.

If one would seek to use herbicides to kill "brush", fall and winter are the best times of year to do the cut/treat method because sap flow is downward and into the roots then, helping to translocate the chemical throughout the plant, thereby killing all of it. Immediately after cutting the stems, glyphosate, triclopyr, or other suitable herbicide is dabbed or painted onto the cut surface. Stronger dilutions of either of these two herbicides should be used for this cut/treat application than are recommended for normal foliar spraying of same. In the case of glyphosate (Roundup) for instance, up to a 50% mix of concentrate in water is called for. But the thing is, with this method, you are using far less chemical because you're just coating that little cut area. It's a good technique, one which I have used many times.

+oM

For everyone who doesn't understand the use of the word "invasive", allow me to explain: It is invasive to ME. It has completely taken over a $40,000 acre of my property. No one invited it to grow there. It INVADED and took over. As a result, it is 40,000 square feet of useless space. I cannot even take 3 steps on it. It is either ME, or the Yaupon. I choose me. The birds can fly another 10 seconds to uncleared property.

I live on four acres in south central Texas in an region known as Lost Pines. Two indigenous trees populate the landscape of this micro (Lost Pines) ecosystem, Blackjack (Oak) and Loblolly Pine trees. Whether native or not (it is native locally) the Yaupon Holly becomes an invasive species if left unmanaged by reducing the quality and diversity of herbaceous vegetation by out-competing other species.

Yaupon Holly will grow anywhere a bird poops its seed. However, it is a destructive nuisance in my area that is killing my Oak trees by invading their roots and smothering them to death.

I went to Home Depo to buy some Roundup and they were selling 5 gallon (3' - 4') Yaupon Holly for $35 each. I'd pay any takers $35 for each 8' - 12' Yaupon removed from my property. The largest Yaupon are near my house. They were planted into a hedge row by the previous owners. Four years after the big fire burnt the house and all of the trees the larger Yaupon are the same size, as the Blackjack trees that sprang up from the dead tree stumps, they are approaching 12'.

I'm willing to leave some of what isn't killing my Oak trees, but there are literally hundreds of clumps of Yaupon on my property.

No need to shout, jrt. Nobody here did anything to you! What's more, in my post and in several others above, it was fully fleshed out that a once well-behaved native plant-yaupon holly in this case-can run amok when human interference-in this case, widespread fire suppression-changes the balance of species. We agree.....so why the anger at folks who only have tried to help?

Around here, everywhere a bird poops one comes up.

It's pretty simple the only way to get rid of Yo pawn Is to pull it by the roots out. Small ones are easy if you have good wet soil after a rain.

One easy way on the larger trees is a big truck and a winch you can even get a hand wench for medium size and change it to The base of tree.

I got a small tractor in my backyard and pulled Is them out with a chain by the roots and cleared an half an acre in one day.

Then you gotta get rid of what you got if you have property you can burn them or you can actually use and actually use them as firewood they don't pop and crack too bad.

In my neighborhood I can bundle things up for feet long or Hire somebody with the mulcher and rock and roll.

I do not agree with using any chemicals on my property I'm getting down in my groundwater that's why round up needs to be banned.

On another subject altogether is is leaf blowing guys with the backpack leaf blowers that seem to be going 24 hours A-day in my neighborhood and I'm thinking about getting on the roof with a sniper rifle and taking them out one at a time.

Seems important to point out that the varieties of Yaupon Holly sold for landscaping grow more slowly than many of the Yaupon plants growing in nature.

North of Houston, the Yaupon is thick because the entore forests were clearcut a century or a few ago with only some smaller seed trees left, which are the unusual big tree you see today. Mismanage forestry by International Corporation design & implementation. After a heavy rain try to pull smaller & mid size roots right out of the ground!

I have 4 acres in Northwest Florida. The yaupons are ridiculous. I cut the same trees down year after year after year. How can I get rid of them for good. They have taken over my property.. I see that you have the same problem. Did you ever find a solution?

The only way to get rid of yaupons is to dig them up by the roots. I tried keeping a fenceline with yaupons clean for years but never got rid of them for good until I dug up the roots. Otherwise they will keep coming back. No doubt it can be a lot of work.