In Defense of Nature

 

Dana Milbank (Washington Post Columnist) Should Perhaps Change His Name to Dana MilliVanillibank

For almost 40 years, my yard has hosted a mix of nonnative—some deemed “invasive”—and native plants. The abundance of wildlife it has attracted was such that I was able to write a book—The Nature-friendly Garden—based upon it.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

You may remember the 1990 scandal involving Milli Vanilli, the German pop-music band fronted by two “singers” who had never sung one note of their songs. When performing publicly, they had simply lip-synced the songs that had been sung and recorded secretly by another person.

 

Likewise, Washington Post commentary writer, Dana Milbank, hasn’t truly written his own thoughts regarding so-called invasive plants in his column of April 7, 2023. You could say he simply lip-synced concepts publicized by Doug Tallamy, entomologist-turned-activist.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/07/suburban-lawn-climate-change-biodiversity/ 

 

When Mr. Milbank posits that he’s “been filling [his] yard with a mix of ecological junk food and horticultural terrorists”, he’s channeling the kind of words Bringing Nature Home author Doug Tallamy loves to employ: Biased expressions that implant negative images in the reader’s mind so he will become yet another minion of this scientist. Nowadays you can’t read a garden or environmental column without being accosted with the same words or variations thereof, as if everyone has become a mouthpiece for Doug Tallamy, which I’ve never seen done more obviously than in this column by Dana Milbank.

 

The problem with all this parroting is that the basic message isn’t based on legitimate science or knowledge of the natural world (for a detailed exposé, please see “Chickadee Chicanery” at https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-carolina-chickadeegrasps-tulip-poplar.html). There is also much repetition of mythical “facts” that are completely wrong (for a detailed explanation, please visit https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2023/01/invasive-plants-friends-or-foes-marlene.html), placing their value on a par with gossip.

 

Still, following in the footsteps of numerous columnists before him, Mr. Milbank starts off denigrating “invasive” plants with false suppositions (that are highly likely to have come from Dr. Tallamy’s first book, a repository of misinformation from beginning to end):

 

“A few of the shrubs I planted were invasive and known to escape into the wild. They crowd out native plants and threaten the entire ecosystem. Our local insects, which evolved to eat native plants, starve because they can’t eat the invasive plants or don’t recognize the invaders as food. This in turn threatens our birds, amphibians, reptiles, rodents and others all the way up the food chain. [Emphasis mine because these statements are all untrue.] Incredibly, nurseries still sell these nasties — without so much as a warning label.”

 

Let’s dissect the Milbank statements above that I’ve written in italics:

 

·    “They crowd out native plants and threaten the entire ecosystem.” Read virtually any description of where you find so-called invasive plant species and you will find the word “disturbed”. This tells you the soil profile has been negatively impacted by people, animals, or weather, and usually means the topsoil is gone. Only very tough plants—known as colonizers—can grow in disturbed areas because the soil is nutrient-poor and is typically compacted. Consequently, these areas may fill with a mix of native and nonnative plants, or mainly one or the other—but every single plant is a colonizer that is working to rehabilitate the land for the benefit of the native plants that require topsoil in which to grow. “Invasiveness” is nothing more than a derogatory word used by people with contempt for alien-plant colonization. Conclusions: Alien plants can’t “crowd out” native plants because once the soil is disturbed and thus degraded, most of our native plants can’t grow there and thus are not there to be crowded out. As for “threaten[ing] the entire ecosystem”, to the contrary—alien colonizers are helping to restore it. 

·    “Our local insects, which evolved to eat native plants, starve because they can’t eat the invasive plants or don’t recognize the invaders as food.” This oft-repeated distorted premise comes straight out of Bringing Nature Home, in which Doug Tallamy deceptively writes about an “excellent demonstration of how restricted a specialist’s [an insect with particular food preferences] diet is.” Dr. Tallamy tells the story of Eastern Tent caterpillars on a cherry tree denuded of its own leaves but hosting a Japanese Honeysuckle vine. He writes that the caterpillars didn’t recognize the honeysuckle as food (sound familiar?). But, of course, they didn’t because this species of insect can only eat plants in the Rose Family, which does not include honeysuckle. The story is told in a perfidious manner, apparently to fool the uninitiated—the MilliVanillibanks of the world who fall for it, hook, line, and sinker, and then lip-sync it. What Doug Tallamy doesn’t tell the reader is that the tent caterpillars could certainly have eaten the so-called invasive Multiflora Rose, which I’ve documented in the photo below. Conclusion: Native insects did not evolve to eat only local (native) plants, but rather can typically feed upon dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of plants related to each other by family classification, even though they grow in other countries.

Because the Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora) is in the same family as the Black Cherry tree (Prunus serotina), it can feed our native Eastern Tent caterpillars.

Now let’s look at other italicized (by me) Milbank quotes from the same Washington Post column.

 

·    “If you want to save the planet, all you really need to do is plant a single oak tree.” The columnist then quotes researcher and author Doug Tallamy, referring to him as the “godfather of the native-plant movement”, who says, “You can plant one tree. You don’t have to get rid of anything else.” Mr. Milbank then tells us to “leave the rest of your plants alone, for now. Tallamy ultimately wants to cut lawn acreage in half, but allows that ‘there is room for compromise,’ and ‘Think of your noninvasive plants and cultivars as ‘decorations.’” So, cultivars are now seen by Dr. Tallamy as eye candy and useless to wildlife, but it’s okay for you to keep them in your yard. Yet in his first book he had a different view, writing with nary a bit of humility: “I predict that in most cases, cultivars of native plants should be fine” in answer to a supposed reader question of “Is it all right to use [showy cultivars] or will insects treat them like aliens?” This question, of course, is asking whether leaf-eating insects will be able to feed on cultivars. Apparently, this academician has changed his mind about his confident “prediction”. The truth is that Doug Tallamy’s entire line of thought represents the epitome of hypocrisy and the dearth of logical thinking that lies at the heart of the entire “invasive-plant” movement. On the one hand, Dr. Tallamy and his followers proclaim that so-called invasive alien plants are a problem because native insects cannot eat them, then they say without any sense whatsoever of self-awareness that it’s acceptable to keep the alien plants they and you like, even though insects supposedly can’t eat those non-invasive alien plants either! This insincerity represents an astounding demonstration of either immorality or stupidity (“showing a lack of good sense or judgment”).

·    And Mr. Milbank provides an example of just what I mean here: “Janet Davis, who runs Hill House Farm & Nursery in Castleton, Va., has a similar [to Doug Tallamy] message for the purists who make you feel bad about your blue hydrangea. ‘Don’t give me crap about something that’s not native but not invasive,’ she said. ‘I’m never going to tell you you can’t have your grandmother’s peony.’ Yet, consider this truism: “Invasive” plants are often spread far and wide by critters that take the fruits and either drop some or pass the seeds through their intestinal tract after eating and digesting the fruit.  Question: What is the difference between a plant being spread by an animal that has made valuable use of it and a plant spread by people as they plant yard after yard with “hydrangeas, azaleas and roses”—which Mr. Milbank decided to keep, despite saying they represented “ecological empty calories”? In other words, it’s not allowable for wildlife to “grow” plants with food value that has helped them to survive, but it's perfectly acceptable for people to grow plants solely to provide aesthetically pleasing “decorations” (the word employed by Professor Tallamy when permitting this contradictory situation).

·    Therefore, if you like your so-called invasive plants (as I do), why should you listen to Mr. Milbank’s advice: “If possible, you should remove the nastiest of the invasive plants if you have them: burning bush, Japanese barberry, Asian bush honeysuckle, English ivy, callery (Bradford) pear and a few others.” Do you think it’s fair for him to keep what he likes, but we can’t keep what we—and, more importantly, our native wildlife—like? 

My yard disproves Doug Tallamy’s thesis that properties with alien plants can’t support the caterpillars that birds (and other wildlife, such as the Four-toothed Mason wasp [Monobia quadridens] seen here) need to raise their young.

 

·    “Worst was my row of nandinas — ‘heavenly bamboo’ — along the foundation.” “You definitely want to remove it,” advised Matt Bright, who runs the nonprofit Earth Sangha, a native-plant nursery in Fairfax County. “Its cyanide-laced berries poison birds.” Please note Mr. Bright’s choice of words to describe Nandina fruits: “cyanide-laced [emphasis mine]”, as if the plant has evil intentions, deliberately adulterating its fruits to kill North American birds. This tactic is typical of the MilliVanilliBanks in the U.S. who want folks to perceive supposedly invasive plants as “bad” even though no evidence exists to support their accusations, especially in this instance. Mr. Milbank and Mr. Bright, who obviously supplied this information, have misspoken here. A study out of the University of North Carolina out of Chapel Hill, published in 2022, explains that Cedar Waxwings are the only birds that might be poisoned, and that’s only going to happen if someone grows so many nandinas that these birds can consume large numbers of fruits in a single feeding bout. If you grow just one or even a few plants, you are not going to poison waxwings. On the other hand, the author of the study points out that, “as distressing and regrettable as these cedar waxwing deaths are, they pale in comparison to the harm visited upon songbirds in the United States from other anthropogenic causes. Free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds annually (Loss et al. 2013), collisions with windows in homes account for another 159.1–378.1 million deaths (Loss et al. 2014a), and a further 89–340 million birds are lost every year to vehicle collisions (Loss et al. 2014b). Against this appalling carnage, deaths of cedar waxwings from N. domestica [Nandina] toxicity are a mere footnote [emphasis—everything in bold—is mine].”     (https://ncbg.unc.edu/2022/05/04/nandina-toxic-to-birds/) The above quote thus affirms my take on so-called invasive plants, which is that this entire issue plays no real part in the decline of insect and bird numbers. (https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2023/01/invasive-plants-friends-or-foes-marlene.html) 

  

Lastly, I want to point out that the reason Dana Milbank is so gullible, believing everything without question that he’s told by “experts”, is because he obviously possesses very little gardening knowledge himself, as exposed not only by his plural of “genus” as “genuses” (the correct form of which is “genera”), but also by the “advice” he offers others. Obviously, Mr. Milbank is ill-qualified to even be discussing this issue in a national newspaper, but he continues:

 

“Don’t have a yard? You can plant a native viburnum, goldenrods, asters, sunflowers and pussy willows in containers on a balcony or patio.” None of these species, except the asters, is particularly suitable for container gardening.

 

“Most people buy their lawn plants from Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walmart, Costco and the like, which either don’t offer native plants or offer those useless, engineered cultivars masquerading as natives. I had thought the magnolias, azaleas, hydrangeas and viburnums I bought were natives (there are native varieties of all these) but they turned out to be either the engineered types or even Asian varieties.” What a surprising admission from a man whose vocation requires research! Nothing precluded this Yale graduate from simply looking up the scientific names of native plants that could be used in his yard.

 

The Azalea caterpillar (Datana major), the larva of a native moth, is a known (in horticultural circles) “pest” of nonnative cultivated azaleas, as seen here in my yard. In other words, the Asian plants Dana Milbank disses as “useless, Asian varieties” can and DO support some of our native caterpillars, making his (and Doug Tallamy’s) overstatement untrue.

Additionally, he “took a small step in the painful task of killing [his] beloved lawn. [He] used landscape fabric to smother about 400 square feet of turf. In its place, [he] planted a smattering of canopy trees (two white and two northern red oaks), understory trees (ironwood, eastern redbud), shrubs (wild hydrangea, black haw viburnum) and various perennials and grasses (Virginia wild rye, blue-stemmed goldenrod, American alumroot, woodrush, spreading sedge).” No seasoned gardener would plant this many large woody plants—especially four oaks that will ultimately become huge and shade out everything else—in such a small area! Dana Milbank is a plant salesman’s dream come true: a person trying to crowd in as many plants as possible without proper thought to the future needs of all these plants—space to spread out and grow into their natural form without being crowded and thus made susceptible to disease; enough room around them to obtain all the nutrients and water they need; and the ability to still get enough sunshine throughout their lifetimes.

 

“Right now, my seedlings look pretty sad. Where once there were healthy lawn and vibrant shrubs, there is now mud and scrawny sprigs poking from the ground every few feet. I put up chicken wire to keep the kids (and me) from trampling them. The carcasses of my invasive plants lie in a heap on the gravel.” This statement supports my contention that ridding your yard (and, in the case of government, natural areas and parks) of “invasive” plants destroys habitat, leaving our wildlife high and dry. Follow the advice of Doug Tallamy via Dana Milbank (and many others) and you make the environment far less hospitable to our wildlife by removing plants that supplied habitat NOW when our critters need it to survive.

 

Removing plants for development permanently takes away habitat and thus is far more of a problem for wildlife than so-called invasive plants, such as the Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) seen here, that DO support wildlife.

Wildlife can’t wait for the future growth of new plants, as these people think: “But in a couple of seasons, if all goes well, [Milbank’s] yard will be full of pollinators, birds and other visitors in need of an urban oasis. Years from now, those tender oak seedlings, now 6-inch twigs, will stretch as high as 100 feet, feeding and sheltering generations of wild animals struggling to survive climate change and habitat loss. I won’t be alive to see it. Yet even now, my infant oaks give me something the most stunning cherry blossom never could: a sense of hope.”  Mr. Milbank, obviously having bought into Doug Tallamy’s more-recent book, Nature’s Best Hope, should have welcomed “pollinators, birds and other visitors” with the full-grown specimen plants he already had, but he must never have looked for these organisms. My property is a mix of alien (including quite a few deemed “invasive”) and native plants, and my yard has always teemed with wildlife of every sort. (www.marlenecondon.com)

 

Although it may sound logical that native insects can only obtain nourishment from native plants they co-evolved with, the reality is that they can—and do—feed upon nonnative plants. Here, a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly is getting the nutrients it requires from a nonnative Glossy Abelia (A.grandiflora) in my yard.

 

“When it comes to the world’s biodiversity crisis — as many as 1 million plant and animal species face near-term extinction because of habitat loss ― I am part of the problem. I’m sorry to say that if you have a typical urban or suburban landscape, your lawn and garden are also dooming the Earth.” No, the Earth’s doom is approaching much more rapidly thanks to people like the ones mentioned in Dana Milbank’s column who believe erroneously that alien plants serve no function in our landscape, and so they destroy functioning habitat, often by adding pesticides (poisons) to the environment.

 

Media promulgation of the mythological idea of “invasive” plants is hastening the arrival of a world in which humans will not be able to live.

NATURE ADVICE:

Dana Milbank’s column makes clear he’s not someone who should be writing about the subject of nature-friendly gardening, and he’s certainly not the person you should trust for advice on this subject. He may work for a national newspaper, but he’s a cheerleader, rather than an informed, objective writer and gardener.

 

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