Native Restoration - Treating Lesser Celandine With Iron HEDTA based Herbicide

I've been trying for several years to encourage native ephemeral wildflowers and other native woodland plants to grow on my wooded hillside in back of the house.  I've removed the honeysuckle and garlic mustard manually over the last several years.  I recently read about people having success using Iron HEDTA based herbicides on Lesser Celandine.  Here are my results.  I'll be updating this page several times this spring and will also update it in Spring of 2021 when I'll be able to see to what extent the Celandine returns after winter.  My understanding is that Iron HEDTA based herbicides are used by organic lawn maintenance companies.  To me, this suggests they might be incrementally better than Glyphosate.  In my case, manual removal of the Lesser Celandine just does not seem practical.

02-April-2020

This was prior to any treatment.  I treated the area between the four orange stakes just after this picture.  It was treated with herbicide at a ratio of 5 fluid ounces per one gallon of water.  I meant to add a drop of dish soap to help it stick but forgot.

Prior to treatment.

03-April-2020

The first treatment was yesterday.  There are some mayapple in there too.  I decided to just spray them to see how they would react rather than try to squirt the herbicide under the umbrellas of the mayapple.

04-April-2020 

It’s pretty easy to see the effects of the treatment.  It’s affecting the Mayapple, which is a bummer

but not unexpected.

05-April-2020

I took this picture just before I sprayed the second time.

I decided to take some closeups of the Celandine and also the effects of the herbicide on the
other plants.

Most of the leaves appear singed around the edges.  It's too early to declare victory.  At the very least it looks less likely to produce seed and spread this year.

This shows some False Solomon's Seal coming up through the Lesser Celandine.  This is one of the existing colonies of plants I've been trying to protect.  I have been broadcasting the herbicide over everything in the plot because I'm also interested to see how it affects some of the other plants it comes in contact with.

Closeup of Mayapple.  The Mayapple doesn't seem to be handling it as well as the False Solomon's Seal.

06-April-2020

Day after second spraying.

07-April-2020

08-April-2020

09-April-2020
From this point forward I'm only going to take a picture every week or so.

15-April-2020
The Celandine within the plot is almost non-existent at this point. There are still some leaves clinging to life. I'm hopeful it'll look really good next Spring.

26-April-2020

I took some extra pictures today showing some other plants within the plot (mayapple and false solomon's seal). The other plants seem to be adversely affected by the Iron HEDTA treatment but they still look better than the Lesser Celandine.