Does roundup kill bulbs?

Does roundup kill bulbs I have an area of invasives that i want to hit, the only thing i want are the bulbs. It is near a large maple so digging them would be really hard. Any ideas?

Thanks, Cristy

Once Round up gets into the soil, it is inactive. If your bulbs are "sleeping" underground, you can spray with round up, and not damage the sleeping plants.

But if round up hits anything green or above ground on perennials and annuals, it will damage, if not kill. For bulbs, to kill them it will usually take more than one application. The chemical will be taken into the plant, but because there is so much mass to the plant (i.e. the bulb), the chemical gets spread so thinly in the plant that it isn't toxic enough to kill. So you must spray multiple times.

Rick

I'd be careful with round up around the maple tree also. I don't think I'd spray. The way I've done it is to paint it on with a brush or I guess you could try a roller. Roundup will kill almost any flowering plant. I don't know what it does to ferns and as far as I understand horsetails aren't bothered by it at all.

I'm not sure ti would hurt trees? I understand it works by somehow messing up the chlorophyll so the plant cannot process or make food. Tree trunks aren't green so don't have chlorophyll, only the leaves do?

Anyway, I use a piece of cardboard or something around my plants when I spray w RU.

If round up is absorbed into live tissue through the trunks of trees (often possible if the trunk surface is still smooth) damage will occur. If ru were not translocateable in plant tissues (which it is), plants like quack grass or Canada thistle with long rhizomes could not be killed.

Witness also that ru is used to kill buckthorn, in the fall, and on cut stumps, with no appreciable chloryphyll present. I am not saying that ru does not disrupt chloryphyll (I don't know), but it must not be the only mode of action.

Rick

huh, I don't know. I wonder if there are different kinds of ru though, grass and weed killer, brush killer, ect. I know what I have is supposed to kill grass and weeds, but I many times spray it two or three times before it dies. It doesn't work that great.

Not really, they mostly vary in how strong they are. Roundup is glyphosate which stops protein production in plants and bacteria. Without protein production a plant can't grow or repair itself.