Sunday, October 25, 2009

Landscape - Salt Tolerance of Landscape Plants

Winter is not far around the corner and deicing salts will be used by road and parking lot maintenance personnel. Excess salts can damage landscape plants. The following are lists of salt tolerant and salt sensitive landscape plants. For areas that receive excess salts from deicing (such as parking lot islands), you should consider salt tolerant species.

Salt Tolerant Shrubs

bayberry
California privet
honeysuckle
Pfitzer juniper
rugosa rose
yucca

Salt Sensitive Shrubs

boxwood
spirea
viburnum

Salt Tolerant Deciduous Trees

boxelder
black cherry
black locust
bur oak
English oak
green ash
honeylocust
red oak
Russian olive
Siberian elm
weeping willow
white oak
white poplar

Salt Sensitive Deciduous Trees

American linden
beech
black walnut
flowering dogwood
ironwood
little-leaf linden
red maple
shagbark hickory
silver maple
sugar maple
sycamore

Salt Tolerant Evergreens

Austrian pine
Japanese black pine
pitch pine
red cedar
white spruce
yew

Salt Sensitive Evergreens

balsam fir
Canadian hemlock
Douglas-fir
eastern white pine
red pine

Information from "De-Icing Salts Can Injure Roadside Vegetation" by Ann B. Gould, Ph.D., Specialist in Plant Pathology in the Nov. 6, 2003 edition of the Plant and Pest Advisory, Landscape, Nursery, and Turf Edition from Rutgers University http://njaes.rutgers.edu/pubs/plantandpestadvisory/2003/ln1106.pdf

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