Montgomery County, VA Invasive Plant Rules: Prohibited Species (2026)

Sec. 7-9 establishes a multiflora rose control committee that serves at the pleasure of the Board of Supervisors and administers the county's control program through an agreement with the state department of agriculture and consumer services. The committee surveys infestations, provides technical assistance to landowners, and may run spraying or other control practices on road rights-of-way, drainage ditch banks, parks, playgrounds, utility rights-of-way and other public or private land. Every landowner has a duty to mow, fallow, treat with herbicides, or use another board-approved practice to prevent multiflora rose on the property from setting seed, though a landowner or lessee may instead follow the current recommendation of the Virginia Tech cooperative extension service or the committee.

Separately, the section bars importing multiflora rose into the county or transporting it anywhere within the county in any form capable of growth, and bars knowingly contaminating uninfected land through the movement of root stock, plant parts, seed, soil, mulch, nursery stock or farm machinery. The Board of Supervisors may accept gifts or grants for the program, and control work performed for a landowner may be billed and collected, with proceeds kept in a dedicated fund that never reverts to the general fund. Failing or refusing to comply is a class 3 misdemeanor.

A related section, Sec. 7-7, separately declares musk thistle and curled thistle a public nuisance and noxious weed under the state's eradication statute, showing the county's noxious-weed authority reaches other invasive species too.