© 2026 Marlene A. Condon All Rights Reserved
[Published June 9, 2026, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia and published June 11, 2026, by The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia.]
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| Nonnative trees, such as this Ailanthus altissima, and even shrubs marked for destruction with ribbons in western Albemarle will further decrease wildlife numbers by making it ever harder for our critters to find food as native plants die due to drought. |
The Ribbon of
Death for Plants—and Animals Too!
I
walk several miles almost every day. Sadly, one day recently, I discovered
someone had been through the area where I live and had put ribbons around
nonnative woody plants along the roadway and along the borders of some
properties.
The
ribbons obviously signified death for the marked plants, courtesy of Governor
Spanberger’s recently passed bills against so-called invasive plants that
nativists (people who support a policy of only allowing native plants to be
sold or grown in this country) had pushed for.
But
these ribbons of death also signify death for our native wildlife. Our critters
require plants to provide food for them and to give them a place to reproduce
and to take cover in.
Yet,
as many of our native plants have begun to die off, thanks to human-caused climate
change which has resulted in many years of drought or near-drought that these
plants did not evolve to tolerate, people are working hard to leave our
wildlife in dire straits by removing the very plants that could aid our
critters. Truth be told, eliminated so-called invasive plants are usually not
immediately replaced with native plants, which is just as well because they
would probably just die in the poor soil and dearth of rain anyway.
The
first native trees to start going were the Red Oaks (Quercus spp.) followed
more recently by Chestnut Oaks (Quercus prinus)—both species that had
filled the void after the American Chestnut trees (Castanea dentata) mostly died out due to a fungal blight. A lot of dead and partially dead oaks, as well
as ailing oaks, are now out there, many lying on the ground because their roots
shriveled, thanks to drought.
Next,
Eastern White Pines (Pinus strobus) began to fail and fall over, and
more recently, Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) trees have started
to look terrible, with many dead limbs still attached on what had been lovely
huge, fully foliaged trees.
Oaks
supply food in the form of acorns for deer and squirrels, and some species of
birds. Many caterpillars eat the leaves. Our white pines provide an evergreen canopy that
allows wildlife to find year-around cover while its cone seeds feed both birds
and mammals in late summer to early fall. And our Tulip Poplars feed
hummingbirds and numerous species of insects for at least a month in late
spring with their flowers that create seeds for mammals and birds to eat
throughout the winter months.
The
loss of these trees is a very serious and concerning problem, yet it’s a
problem that won’t be fixed (but instead worsened) by getting rid of alien
plants. Far too often, people remove nonnative plants but don’t replant, not
that they could necessarily do so successfully anyway.
Areas
filled with supposedly “invasive” plants are almost always areas that
were somehow depleted of nutrients and good tilth (i.e., the physical condition
and structure of the soil), which is why native plants did not naturally fill
the area back in.
Thus,
is it really wise then to remove alien plants that can grow there and perform
the same functions that native plants are able to do in less-impacted areas,
such as maintain soil stability and feed wildlife? People need to learn to look
at the big picture, not just a small slice of it.
Recently
I was taken to task for suggesting that alien plants perform the same functions
as our native plants. What seems to be lost on folks is that plants function
the same the world over and, in fact, usually have relatives elsewhere.
That’s
the reason I’ve found our native Eastern Tent caterpillars feeding on
Multiflora Rose shrubs (Rosa multiflora, originally from eastern Asia,
China, Japan, and Korea) along the road where I live. Preferring trees and
shrubs in the Rosaceae family, they can feed successfully on plants not
originally found in North America.
The
person who complained about me also claimed that “the literature concludes that
invasives decimate soil functionality” and that “invasives cannot heal depleted
soil and their presence will further deplete soil.”
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| Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca, seen here) is the best food plant in our area for Monarch butterfly larvae, thanks to its huge size that provides plenty of food in the form of leaves. |
Nothing
disproves false science like reality. When I moved to the land I’ve now lived
on for 40 years, the land had been cleared around my house, meaning the rich
topsoil had been removed. While I added amendments to areas where I would plant
flowers and to the area where my 2000-square-foot fruit and vegetable garden
would go, I did nothing to the west side of the yard other than to plant a row
of Autumn Olive shrubs (Elaeagnus umbellata) because I knew they were extremely
beneficial to our wildlife.
Indeed,
all these years later, these plants still provide nectar and pollen for bees
and other insects in spring, fruits for mammals and birds in late summer, and
winter buds for squirrels and migratory birds (e.g., White-throated Sparrows
and Dark-eyed Juncos) during the winter. The truth is that this nonnative
shrub species—now banned from sale in our state, thanks to folks who don’t know
better—is the absolute best wildlife plant anyone could imagine. No
other plant—not even native plants—comes close to providing food practically
year-around to such a huge variety of wildlife.
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| In a yard filled with Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) as well as nonnative plants such as Lantana camara (seen here), a Monarch butterfly finds plenty of places to lay its eggs as well as plenty of blooms from which to get nectar for itself. |
A large empty space remained in between my food garden and the Autumn Olive shrub line, which I left to itself. I added no soil amendments or fertilizer; I simply watched what took place through the years. And guess what? Today I still have my original Autumn Olive shrubs, but that large empty space over time began to hold numerous native plants, such as a Persimmon tree (Diospyros virginiana), American Euonymus (Euonymus americanus), Coralberry shrubs (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus), and a wonderful collection of native wildflowers, such as Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) and Large-flowered Leafcup (Smallanthus uvedalius) —all of which came in on their own and exist to this day!
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| An intimate view of how a Monarch caterpillar feeds on a Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) leaf. |
