CONDON’S CORNER

THE RIBBON OF DEATH FOR PLANTS—AND ANIMALS TOO 

© 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.] 

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.”

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.

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!

An intimate view of how a Monarch caterpillar feeds on a Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) leaf.

I’m sure people wonder how I can so adamantly defend the use of so-called invasive plants, and now you know. My knowledge is always derived from first-hand experience that obviously cannot be denied. 

 

 

CONDON’S CORNER

Make Monarchs Great (in numbers) Again 

[Published March 11, 2025, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia, and The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia.  Published March 12, 2025, by The Daily News-Record,  the daily newspaper of Harrisonburg, Virginia.] 

© 2025 Marlene A. Condon All Rights Reserved 

 

Migrating Monarchs depend upon nectar sources along the way to provide energy for their long-distance trip. During drought, potted plants (such as this lantana near the author’s carport), can make up for parched plants in your yard and surrounding areas. 

MAGA—Make America Great Again—is a revived political slogan originally employed by President Ronald Reagan in 1980. Many interpretations of its message exist, but one thing is for sure: Its current usage does not embody conservation of the environment that supports us.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/02/20/project-2025-what-environmental-cutbacks-has-trump-made-in-a-month-and-whats-next

It’s unfortunate but true that unless something occurs immediately following an action taken, such as getting lung cancer or COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) as soon as one starts smoking, people often refuse to believe the connection between the events. The denial of climate change by our current president parallels this statement perfectly.

But our climate has indeed changed for the worse—as scientists had predicted. Summers have become blazingly hot and winters frigidly cold, while strong winds push over large trees that have died or are in the process of dying as a result of the increasingly frequent bouts of drought. And yet, small engines (lawn mowers, leaf blowers) are still often employed while many people continue to drive as much as ever, sending ever more pollutants responsible for climate change into our atmosphere.  

Climate change isn’t about just us. Its effects upon wildlife can be far greater than the consequences for humans. People have the ability to move somewhere more able to support them; animals don’t always enjoy that option (think seals and polar bears dependent upon Arctic icebergs that are becoming far fewer).

For insects, such as the Monarch butterfly, a severe shortage of precipitation (drought) or a precipitation deluge can increase individual mortality, as well as limit procreation. Recurring droughts in Virginia are very restrictive for the many plants that can feed adult Monarchs during their migration to Mexico.

Should we care about these fellow organisms? Absolutely. Wildlife represents the cogs in the environmental machine that keeps it functioning properly for the benefit of all living things. As we lose species, we lose the ability of the environment to fully support any of us. 

The Monarch—being a migratory species—is especially prone to difficulties caused by weather events. Its numbers have been precipitously dropping for many years now (though not only due to climate change), sending us a dire message that we would do well to heed: Something is terribly wrong with our world. 

When Monarchs were first discovered overwintering in Mexico in 1975, they covered the Oyamel fir trees in a mountainous forest location. Prominent entomologist Lincoln Brower, who studied Monarchs for six decades and spent the end of his career at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, was so awed upon viewing the wintering Monarchs within a year of their discovery, that he said, “It was like walking into Chartres Cathedral and seeing light coming through stained-glass windows. This was the eighth wonder of the world.”

https://www.nathab.com/know-before-you-go/mexico-central-america/monarch-butterfly-migration/monarch-guide/the-discovery/

Heartbreakingly, this eighth wonder of the world has been dwindling in numbers and is now being considered for threatened status by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

In the winter of 1995-96, 45 acres (18.21 hectares) of forest were covered with monarchs. From then to 2003-04, their populations fluctuated annually, with this last season showing 27.5 acres (11.13 hectares) of forest coverage. But then a downward spiral began in earnest, with the monarch’s forest coverage in the winter season of 2020 being just over 5 acres (2.02 hectares).

https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/the-great-monarch-migration

In the 2023-2024 season, the butterflies covered only 2.2 acres (0.9 hectares). It’s the second-worst year ever recorded. 5.4 acres (2.2 hectares) were recorded in the 2022-2023 season.

https://wildlifemanagement.institute/brief/february-2024/wintering-monarch-survey-shows-large-decline-numbers

The 2024-25 winter season survey numbers just came out, showing Monarchs are covering 4.42 acres (1.8 hectares), which is quite an improvement from last year. The annual survey measures the area of forest in which monarch butterflies hibernate each winter, and is considered a reliable indicator of the eastern monarch’s population status. Sadly, this is still pitifully far below their historic numbers from decades ago. 

https://xerces.org/press/number-of-monarchs-overwintering-in-mexico-increases-still-well-below-historic-norms

If you care about the Monarch butterfly and about preserving its unique migratory journey, please send your comments encouraging the Fish and Wildlife Service to employ the Endangered Species Act to try to help prevent the extinguishment of the eighth wonder of the world.

The comment period ends Wednesday, March 12, 2025. The link below will take you to a site that answers many questions you might have. It also provides the link and instructions for submitting your comments. 

https://monarchjointventure.org/blog/usfws-seeks-public-input-on-monarch-butterfly-esa-listing or look up “USFWS Seeks Public Input on Monarch Butterfly ESA Listing”.

Make Monarchs great (in numbers) again!

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 Nativist Methodology Reveals Dearth of Supporting Evidence for “Invasive”-plant Ideology

The alien “invasive” Bradford Pear tree (Pyrus calleryana) often grows alongside native Eastern Redcedar trees (Juniperus virginiana) in disturbed-soil sites, adding diversity to the landscape that better provides for wildlife. While the redcedar and the pear both make fall fruits that provide food for birds in winter, the redcedar doesn’t provide flowers for pollinators in spring as the pear does. Nativists need to look at the big picture so they can grasp the value that so-called invasive plants add to our developed (aka “disturbed”) landscapes. 

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

Four years ago, I wrote an article entitled, “Ecologists Recognizing Value of Alien Plants”. It referenced an opinion piece signed by 19 ecologists (every one of whom possesses a Ph.D.) who disagreed with the nativist take (the policy of favoring native plants) on so-called invasive plants.

 . 

https://www.crozetgazette.com/2019/02/11/blue-ridge-naturalist-ecologists-recognizing-value-of-alien-plants/

 

The next month, three people signed their names to a letter blasting me for my article.

 

https://www.crozetgazette.com/2019/03/12/to-the-editor-the-blue-ridge-naturalist-not/#comments

 

Their letter perfectly illustrates the methodology employed by any group that supports a weak cause. To help you recognize the tactics employed by people to convince you to join a fight not well supported by facts, I will provide examples from the above-referenced letter to the editor. For efficiency, I will refer to the three letter writers as The Triad.

 

The first clue that people don’t have much to say in defense of their beliefs is evident when they immediately attack someone’s personal integrity and knowledge instead of simply supplying support for their side of the story. The Triad started off their letter by writing that “[my] bias and manipulative language displays itself in every paragraph as [I portray] ‘plant nativists’ and invasion biologists as extremists with an evil agenda that will cost you, the taxpayer, millions of dollars in unnecessary and wasted spending.”

 

In reality, I had written about a current and ongoing activity to support my contention that “Critical thinking is a must for deciding invasive-plant policy to avoid harming wildlife and wasting millions in tax dollars.” I wrote that, “In the name of ‘saving’ the environment from so-called invasive plants, a movement has sprung up to remove Eucalypt (Eucalyptus globulus) trees from California [even though these Australian trees] now serve as the most frequented overwintering sites for the western Monarch butterfly population.”

 

https://milliontrees.me/2013/11/01/monarch-butterflies-in-california-need-eucalyptus-trees-for-their-winter-roost/

 

Another clue that people are pushing a weak agenda is when they lie about their adversary. Thus, The Triad went on to write that I cited “as a scientific reference an eight-year-old Comment [sic] in the journal Nature by Mark A. Davis and others.”

 

No, I had made quite clear that the article was “an opinion piece [emphasis mine] signed by 19 ecologists in the journal Nature” in which they argue that “policy and management decisions must take into account the positive effects of many invaders.”

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/474153a

 

Often, people arguing a rather invalid point of view employ flimflam. They cite scientific sources that are fallacious, wrong, and/or misleading because those papers support their viewpoint.

 

“Condon appears to ignore and does not cite the vast amount of peer-reviewed literature on the damaging effects of nonnative plants. For example, recent research published by Narango et al., in the October 22, 2018, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science demonstrates that native plants are best for birds.”

 

Even if I were in agreement with The Triad, I would never cite this deceptive research that chose a forest-dwelling bird as representative of a species that can live in suburbia without human assistance, which it can’t. The scientists should have chosen a more-appropriate species, such as Northern Cardinal, American Robin, Gray Catbird, Northern Mockingbird, etc. Please see “Chickadee Chicanery” at this web site for a full exposé of this study.

https://indefenseofnature.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-carolina-chickadeegrasps-tulip-poplar.html

An American Robin, unlike the Carolina Chickadee, can find food in un-pesticided lawn grass, making it a suitable subject for study in suburbia to determine how well some bird species can survive among alien plants.

 

A ploy people often use when pushing a shaky narrative is overemphasizing the value of supposed facts that support their opinion. The Triad wrote that “Scientists have determined that our migrating birds require high-fat foods to fuel their southward flights in autumn. However, autumn olive berries are sugary sweet treats, the junk food of the bird diet. Smith et al. demonstrated that autumn olive fruits provide about half the nutrition of several types of native fruits, such as dogwood, at the time of year when North American migrating songbirds need fat, not carbohydrates, to fuel their long flights. (“Fruit Quality and Consumption by Songbirds during Autumn Migration,” Wilson Journal of Ornithology, March, 2007).”  

When I looked up this study, I found that it states that “Most common fruits [emphasis mine] on Block Island [where the study took place in Rhode Island during bird migration] contained primarily carbohydrates...and little protein...and fat. [emphasis mine]”

 

As the research paper’s authors were mainly speaking of native plants, this statement in no way supports the letter writers’ contention that the researchers demonstrated that Autumn Olive fruits were inferior nutritionally to native fruits—because most of the native fruits were primarily sugar (carbohydrates), too!

 

The Triad doesn’t understand the science of nutrition, which is “the assimilation by living organisms of food materials that enable them to grow, maintain themselves [emphasis mine] and reproduce.” (www.britannica.com/science/nutrition)

 

Sugar is a natural source of energy that’s useful for everyday activities. When migrating songbirds need to stop to rest and “refuel”, they need energy to hop around to find food, and Autumn Olive fruits fill the bill. These sugary fruits serve birds in the same manner as jelly beans (that are mostly sugar) serve a runner in need of glucose to continue exercising.

 

The research paper’s authors also state that “fruit selection by birds on Block Island was not simply related to differences in macronutrient composition between fruits...studies of wild and captive songbirds have shown that some species preferentially select high-fat fruits...or high-sugar fruits [emphasis mine]...”, which hardly implies that Autumn Olive fruits are “junk food”.

 

High-sugar fruits, such as Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata, seen here), provide energy needed to keep animals going about their day-to-day activities.

 

People will often accuse someone of wrongdoing as they themselves supply their own prevarication: “Condon mistakenly asserts that “nativists” (a derogatory term she uses for people who encourage planting only native plants in their gardens and in our natural areas) insist that all alien plants are problems and must go. [emphasis mine]”

 

That was not true. I wrote that, “Rather than critically analyzing each situation and dealing with it in the most appropriate manner, plant nativists (people who practice a policy of favoring native plants over nonnative) take the approach that demands removal of every plant designated as ‘invasive’ [all emphasis mine], no matter what function it is fulfilling in the local environment or how well it fills what would be an otherwise empty ecological niche.”

 

Also, I defined “nativist” in a way that literally describes the basic belief of nativism, which is hardly “derogatory”.

 

Nativists abhor Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica syn.Polygonum cuspidatum) despite the value of its blooms to pollinators, such as this Four-toothed Mason Wasp (Monobia quadridens) and numerous tiny bees. A so-called invasive plant, it has “stayed put” where I planted it decades ago. 

A sure-fire proof that someone doesn’t have a case is when they go off on a tangent that’s nonsensical: “While it appears that many nonnatives, such as Japanese knotweed, which Condon mentions in her recent article, provide shelter for animals, that shelter is not always useful and appropriate for many species. Take the bobwhite quail, for instance…that need shelter that allows them to move about quickly… [such as] clump-forming grasses whose structure offers ground-level spaces beneath dense, overhead cover.”

 

The Triad went off on a strange tangent here, since the point they make with bobwhite quail is nonsensical in the extreme. They are suggesting that somehow nonnative plants are supposed to fulfill shelter requirements for ALL animals, which, of course, is utter nonsense. Even those native clumps of grass they talk about are not going to shelter ALL animals.

 

When an argument is seriously lacking substance, people fall back on their credentials in the hopes that it will fool people into thinking they are experts: “Susan A. Roth holds a BS and an MS in Ornamental Horticulture from Cornell University and is the author of 10 gardening books.  William Hamersky holds a BS in Wildlife Biology from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a MS in Biology from California State University, Hayward. Manuel T. Lerdau is a Professor of Environmental Science and of Biology at the University of Virginia and has a PhD in Biology from Stanford.”

 

Ms. Roth’s advanced degrees in Ornamental Horticulture in no way prepared her for dealing with the natural world because, until very recently, horticulturists mainly saw most wild critters as “pests” and native plants as “weeds”—all of which were to be killed if they found their way into one’s garden.

 

Mr. Hamersky’s degrees should have prepared him with a better understanding of how the natural world works, yet—based upon his signing on to this letter—he’s apparently unaware of the fact that environmental conditions determine where plants are found. Someone with real knowledge of the real world should be able to see there’s no such things as “invasive” plants, but rather environmental conditions that encourage these plants to do well in particular areas.

 

Professor Lerdau’s qualifications outrank those of Roth and Hamersky, which might fool people into thinking that certainly he must be someone you could trust. Yet, he signed on to a letter rife with unfounded accusations, insults, lies, and misleading arguments.  

 

Unlike the three letter writers who should be embarrassed by, and ashamed of, their letter to the editor of The Crozet Gazette, I can truthfully say that I can back up everything I’ve ever written.

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

Use common sense to determine whom you can believe when people disagree about an environmental narrative. Who makes sense and who doesn’t? Who employs facts instead of insults? Who’s calm instead of angrily supplying emotional responses? If someone needs to tout a degree, is it a sign he doesn’t know as much as he’d like you to believe he does? And, most importantly, don’t buy into a false narrative just because a majority of people have done so. That’s how slavery and other evils have been able to persist in the world—people are afraid to swim against the tide lest they be severely criticized and perhaps embarrassed or even punished (as I have been by losing jobs). But sometimes, you must be brave and stand up against what you know is not right.   

 

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