Ripped out by the roots
Our property is overrun with Winged Euonymus (pronounced U-Juan-Oh-Muss). People actually buy this stuff at nurseries and home centers and try to get it to grow at their homes. One man's weed is another man's wonder, I guess. I'll admit that these shrubs look kinda cool in the fall when the leaves turn fiery red, then yellow, then fall off, but the rest of the time they just make a thick tangled screen that cut off my vista into the woods. But I'm gonna get me a Brush Grubber with fiberglas Ironclad extension handle and show them who is boss around here.
The brush grubber works like Chinese handcuffs; the harder you pull, the harder it grips.
Steel teeth dig into the trunk of the offending shrub or small tree when you pull pack on the long handle and use the T-shaped fulcrum bar to rip unwanted plants out by their nasty tenacious roots. Brush Grubber makes other versions, including a hand-held model and one that you can hook to the rear bumper of your vehicle with a chain. (Oh boy! That sounds like good fun!)
(2) Comments
I like a similar tool called the weed wrench http://www.weedwrench.com/
The first root that comes from a plant is called the radicle. The three major functions of roots are 1) absorption of water and inorganic nutrients, 2) anchoring of the plant body to the ground and 3) storage of food and nutrients. In response to the concentration of nutrients, roots also synthesise cytokinin, which acts as a signal as to how fast the shoots can grow.