You Reap What You Sow—Pesticide Usage Guarantees Collateral Damage

This Ortho ad hanging in front of its product line at a store could not have made any clearer the attempt to persuade an unknowing public to unnecessarily use poison on an insect that would only be around for a limited period of time.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

Almost 60 years ago, Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, was published. Warning us of the danger pesticides posed to wildlife, especially birds, it impacted people’s feelings towards these products that are meant for only one purpose: to put an end to life. For some time afterwards, neither environmental activists nor people who cared about nature would employ pesticides in the landscape.

 

But, just as the effort back then to get society to view women as equal counterparts to men, rather than as sex objects, has somehow backfired (today’s women and teenaged girls routinely dress in clothing that brings sex to mind), so too has Ms. Carson’s admonition about pesticides been turned on its head.

 

Today, people treat these poisons as innocuous substances. Pesticides line shelves in stores for homeowners and gardeners to employ as they see fit (although this retail practice should be discontinued).

 

Thus, in the spring of 2021, when humongous numbers of periodical cicadas emerged in several areas of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states, it’s quite possible that many people may have decided they should employ pesticides, even though these other-worldly insects would only be around for 3-4 weeks, at most. (They exit the ground to mate so females can lay fertilized eggs in twigs to start the cycle of life all over again; then all the adults die.)

And from May to the end of July, juvenile songbirds in the Mid-Atlantic and all the way to the Midwest became ill and died.

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/suspect-list-narrows-in-mysterious-bird-die-off/

 

Although no agency is saying it has determined the cause to be pesticides (or anything else, for that matter), there are many factors pointing strongly towards that conclusion.

 

·    Ortho has blatantly advertised one of its more potent insect-killing brands precisely for the killing of periodical cicadas (see photo).

 

·    Most of the affected birds were fledglings (they’d only recently left the nest) of species likely to eat large cicadas: Common Grackles, Blue Jays, American Robins, and European Starlings. Young, inexperienced birds would be more likely to make a meal of the abundant and easily caught insects.

 

·    Pesticides affect neurological function, such as the seizures exhibited by dying birds.

 

·    The fact that bird deaths precisely coincided with the time-frame of the periodical cicada emergence, and has subsided with the end of this event, is highly unlikely to be mere coincidence.

 

You reap what you sow—pesticide usage guarantees collateral damage. If the insects were poisoned, birds eating them would also suffer the effects of these chemicals. (Yes, it’s cruel to employ pesticides for insects, as if they are somehow not worthy of a humane death.)

 

On neighborhood blogs, people exhibit little patience with wildlife, especially insects that they’ve been led to believe can be very dangerous to them or their plants. Not having much knowledge of periodical cicadas (most people nowadays know far too little about wildlife), folks may have feared the great numbers of these insects would destroy their plantings (ignorance is a prime instigator of apprehension).

 

In this age of the Internet, too many faux “experts” effortlessly spread misinformation far and wide. Those working in the gardening industry are perhaps the lead offenders in this regard, telling people these insects will kill the branch tips of small trees and thus “harm” them. But this notion is wrong.

 

Plants exist to support animal life, which they can do quite successfully if their local environment is functioning properly. In other words, when predator/prey relationships are in balance, insects and other forms of life do not overwhelm plants with their presence, which is why everyone should create nature-friendly gardens. Sure, critters may injure plants, but not enough to cause serious harm. Plants are extremely resilient and bounce back from a bit of loss; otherwise, life would not persist as it has for eons.

 

Now, you may not like to see dead branchlets on your tree, but within a year, your tree will be flush with new growth while many of the lifeless branchlets will have fallen to the ground. As most birds require those twigs for nest building, periodical cicadas obviously help provide them with the “lumber” they need.

 

This incident should make abundantly clear to folks the havoc they are wreaking upon this planet with pesticides. Our wildlife is struggling to survive, as we certainly will if we don’t wake up and recognize how much we depend upon wildlife for our own welfare. People must learn to live in agreement with nature instead of fighting it at every turn. And they must learn this lesson much sooner rather than later.

  

NATURE ADVICE:

 

When someone talks about doing right by the environment these days, it’s virtually guaranteed they will bring up so-called invasive plants that need to be gotten rid of. And how is that often accomplished? By employing pesticides.

 

You can rest assured that even though there may not be many (yes, there are some) species of insects that feed upon the leaves of alien plants, many kinds of critters make use of these plants. An overlooked aspect of “invasive” plants is that they do provide structure. Structure is a necessary component of a nature-friendly garden as it affords animals of many kinds a place to hide from predators, to rest a bit, or to build a nest (think web-weaving spiders). No one looks for these animals before spraying with deadly chemicals that will kill them, and no one would be able to locate all of them anyway.

 

Pesticides are meant to kill, and they do. No one needs to use chemicals that bring further harm to our environment on a home property or in what’s supposed to be a natural area.

 

You Can’t Save The Chesapeake Bay

According to the Wines Vines Analytics group, there were 276 wineries in Virginia in 2018. The growth of this agricultural activity coincides with increased pesticide usage, not only because crop monocultures invite problems with insects, but also because this crop is perpetually prone to fungal problems in such a humid climate.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

The Washington Post published an edited version of this article online on August 20, 2021 and in print on August 22, 2021. 

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/20/do-we-even-care-about-health-chesapeake-bay/

“There never was much hope. Just a fool’s hope...” [The Return of the King by author J. R. Tolkien]

 

Close to 50 years after the Clean Waters Act was passed, the Chesapeake Bay remains on the EPA’s “dirty waters list”. Obviously, citizens haven’t taken very seriously the mandate “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters.”

 

Why? It’s been my experience that far too many people don’t believe that humans depend upon a properly functioning environment for their own lives. Perhaps the main reason for this disconnect is our ability to obtain food so easily by driving to a grocery store.

 

When your nourishment comes prepackaged, you haven’t got a clue to how vital a properly functioning environment is to its production. Unfortunately, most farmers and gardeners nowadays don’t have a clue either. If they did understand the importance of growing food in agreement with nature, neither would need to employ the pesticides, and anywhere near the amount of fertilizer, they do. If that statement sounds far-fetched, it isn’t.

 

Until rheumatoid arthritis made my hands much too painful to continue gardening, I grew all my own fruits and vegetables for decades without using one drop of pesticide. To enrich the soil, I returned every bit of organic matter from the kitchen that was inedible (including bones) to the land. And I left in place any dead herbaceous-plant material to decay where the nutrients borrowed from the soil for plant growth could be repaid for the benefit of future plants.

 

The “secret” to growing food naturally (as mankind has had to do for thousands of years without chemical fertilizers and pesticides that now run off to the Chesapeake Bay) is to embrace the dictates of “Mother Nature” instead of the misguided precepts put forth by garden writers, magazines and books, and university extension offices.

 

The horticultural/agricultural industry is based upon studies performed under artificial conditions, and they are done with the unrealistic expectation that you should be able to harvest virtually every bit of food that’s grown. Both situations result in erroneous views of wildlife, which is why horticulturists and scientists alike view numerous animals as “pests” that need to be exterminated.

 

But, when you encounter difficulties in your gardening/farming pursuits, it’s a sure sign you are doing something out of sync with the way the natural world works (and must work). In other words, nature is not out to get you; it’s simply responding to what you’re doing that’s inappropriate.

 

Just as you need to obey the laws set forth by man to maintain civility in society, you must obey the laws of the natural world, too. Two key mandates are usually overlooked by those wanting to garden/farm successfully.

 

·    You must include wild areas nearby containing plants disparaged as “weeds”. Those plants support the insect predators that can keep your garden/agricultural area in balance so you don’t encounter “pest” problems. They also feed native pollinators that help your plants to make the fruits you desire.

 

·    You must avoid growing large areas of only one kind of crop. Such unnaturally occurring plant monocultures can result in unnaturally high numbers of plant-feeding insects that can multiply rapidly.

 

Then, of course, there’s common sense: You must protect food plants from mammals with similar tastes to humans. Nowadays, we should accomplish this feat with fencing or some other kind of barrier around the food patch. Otherwise, you’d need to stay awake as people did long ago to protect their plants or animals—as mentioned in Luke 2:8 where shepherds guard their flocks of sheep by night.

 

Instead, our USDA issues permits to agriculturists to kill wild animals, even though no physical barriers have been erected around crops or grazing animals, nor guard animals employed. It’s as if our wildlife is supposed to somehow know man’s endeavors are off-limits.

 

You might argue that factory farming is mandatory with 7.9 billion mouths to feed. However, this point demonstrates why there never was much hope of cleaning the Chesapeake Bay and restoring it to good health. Only a fool could believe that an ever-increasing human population and environmental remediation are compatible.

 

Space for maintenance of health is limited (no organism can live well in overcrowded conditions) and is a requisite for maintaining clean habitat for us and the organisms that work to keep the environment working properly for our benefit.

 

Humans could have voluntarily limited the size of their families over the past half century via better family planning, but too many people erringly believed the Bible’s mandate “to go forth and multiply” applied only to mankind.

Yet, according to Genesis 1:22, “And God blessed the [living creatures], saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply on the earth.’” (The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, The World Publishing Company, 1962)

 

In other words, humans have blundered by not sharing the planet with wildlife.

NATURE ADVICE:

Someone needs to start the conversation regarding human-population growth and what it means for people and the Earth. That someone needs to be every person who understands the necessity of maintaining a properly functioning environment for human life to persist.

 

Talk with your church leaders because the laws of nature are incontrovertible; we limit our own numbers or we perish.

 

 Slug Lives Matter

Slugs are part of Mother Nature’s clean-up crew; they return nutrients to the soil for the benefit of plants (and gardeners!). Here, some slugs feed upon, and thus recycle, a discarded corn cob.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

Folks really need to change their attitude towards wildlife in their yards. Humans cannot exist on this planet without the organisms that do the jobs required to keep our environment running properly. Therefore, instead of constantly grousing about wildlife, they really need to learn to show more respect and gratitude for these critters.

 

Let’s look at an example from the Internet of a gardener’s complaint about slugs, and examine the poor “solutions” given by the garden columnist to address this complaint.

 

https://edmontonjournal.com/life/homes/gardening/growing-things-outdoors-the-lettuce-eaters-club

 

·    Gardener: “I, too, have been waging the war with the slugs over the years. I wouldn’t mind if they ate an entire leaf one at a time but they are like greedy slobs at a smorgasbord going from leaf to leaf nibbling a little bit out of each.” (Something to consider: No one would ever talk about people behaving “like greedy slobs at a smorgasbord”. Perhaps we’d think less badly of wildlife if we didn’t use name-calling for wildlife either.)

 

The garden columnist offered a list of Band-Aid solutions. Rather than addressing the underlying cause[s] of the problem the gardener is complaining about, his recommendations serve only to interfere with the proper functioning of the environment.

·     “Do not leave any decomposing plant material laying [sic] about.”

·     “Remove dead leaves promptly.”

·     “Cultivate your soil regularly.”

·     “Boards, rocks and stones can also make good hiding spots. Remove these if slugs are a problem.”

·     “Keep your lawn neatly trimmed. Slugs will often use tall grass as a hiding spot.”

 

One of the “jobs” a slug performs is that of recycling decaying plant and animal matter. This vital activity provides nutrition for your plants by returning essential components to the soil your plants are growing in. In other words, its activity feeds your plants so you don’t need to spend money, time, and effort applying chemical fertilizers.

 

Therefore, the worst thing you can do is to remove all decomposing plant material, including dead leaves, as advised in this published list. If you don’t leave a slug’s preferred food in place, it has no choice except to turn to your plants when it’s starving.

 

Now, if you are trying to “live in harmony with nature”, the point of the writer’s column, you are not supposed to be killing the organisms out there. And yet, the advice to “cultivate your soil regularly” is suggested for just that purpose.

 

Mixing up the soil regularly, either with a rototiller or a hand cultivator, chops up or otherwise injures critters within the soil, or exposes them to light and drying air that they are trying to escape by living within the dirt. Additionally, you might expose eggs that will either dry out in the sunshine or get eaten by predators, both of which negatively impacts the perpetuation of life.

 

The suggestion to remove rocks and stones that comprise a natural part of the environment because slugs hide there is not exactly living in harmony with nature either. And keeping your lawn trimmed so slugs can’t hide in tall grass is a very poor idea for the health of the grass itself. People cut their grass so short that it’s unable to grow longer roots to survive drought, and is also not even able to shade the ground to conserve moisture.

 

The last suggestion made by the garden columnist is the worst of all: “If these all fail, Safers Slug Bait is my go-to solution. It’s an eco-friendly product and targets the slugs without harming other organisms.” Whoa! This person could not have made a more egregiously wrong statement if he tried.

 

The active ingredient in this product is sodium ferric EDTA, which is also known as sodium ferric ethylenediaminetetraacetate.

 

https://www.saferbrand.com/safer-brand-slug-and-snail-killer-2-lb-sb125

 

It’s a salt that “works by interacting with and destroying hemocyanin, a copper-based compound found in the blood of molluscs [slugs and snails] and arthropods [insects, spiders, and both land and marine crustaceans; emphasis mine] which is used to carry oxygen.”

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferric_sodium_EDTA

 

Therefore, this poison will kill any of the kinds of animals I’ve listed above within brackets, which is a far cry from being “an eco-friendly product [that] targets the slugs without harming other organisms”.

 

Mind you, Safer tells you that its product “[c]an be used around pets and wildlife”. Indeed, even Wikipedia tells you, “The compound is much safer than Metaldehyde and does not pose a significant risk to birds, pets, or humans so long as the bait is not consumed [emphasis mine].”

 

Well, it may be unlikely that humans would ingest this pesticide, but the likelihood is much, much higher for spiders, land crustaceans (pillbugs), and some kinds of insects to eat this substance. And I’d be very surprised if a bird wouldn’t pick up this bait and swallow it, either because it thought the bait was food or the grit it needs for grinding food in its gizzard.

 

It’s wise to keep in mind that pesticides are typically nonselective poisons that can kill far more creatures than you might expect. Why not create a nature-friendly garden that supports life on Earth instead of destroying it?

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

You shouldn’t believe most of what you hear or read about pesticides. They are often described in terms that make them sound totally harmless, but since when is killing animals harmless? It’s cruel and inhumane to these organisms, which should be taken into account even if you don’t want them around.

 

Ecological Impact or Ecological Value? A Discussion of Porcelain Berry (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata) versus Wild Grapes (Vitis spp.)

In a publication put out by the Delaware Department of Agriculture, we are told that “invasive” Porcelain Berry forms “dense mats, climbing over other vegetation and reducing light availability to other plants”, as if our native grape vines are better behaved. But, as can be seen in this photo (taken on a road one-half mile from where I live), our wild grape species can grow in the exact same manner.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

A publication of the Delaware Department of Agriculture, Mistaken Identity? Invasive Plants and Their Native Lookalikes, illustrates perfectly how the “invasive” plant movement deviously manipulates people.

 

https://extension.psu.edu/invasive-weeds-wild-grape

 

The guide has a great layout, with the introduced (alien) grape plant pictured and described on the left page and the native grape-lookalike pictured and described on the right page. You are told when the plants flower and bear fruits; where the plants are native; the types of habitats in which they grow; and when the nonnative plant was introduced to the United States and its range in the Mid-Atlantic states. It’s all good to this point.

 

But, when we get to the next section, which discusses ecological services, the sections are entitled differently. We find that so-called invasive plants cause “Ecological Impacts [emphasis mine]” while native plants provide “Ecological Value [emphasis mine]”.

 

This wording difference subtly influences the reader’s mind, manipulating him into viewing nonnative plants as BAD while viewing native plants as GOOD—even though both kinds of plants provide the same ecological services to wildlife because both are in the Grape Family!

 

What are ecological services? When speaking of plants, this term refers to such things as cleaning the air, filtering water, holding soil in place to prevent erosion, supporting wildlife by providing food, shelter, and nesting sites (though not necessarily to all species), and assisting replenishment of groundwater.

 

It should be obvious that all plants provide the benefits listed above, with possibly the exception of food for certain species of wildlife. Nativists (people who generally favor—but not always—native plants) often express concern that the problem with nonnative plants is that they do not feed caterpillars (a type of creature once reviled by the majority of gardeners, but now the favored wildlife organism for those who profess to be environmentalists).

 

In the case of the alien Porcelain Berry, however, we are talking about a plant closely related to our native wild grapes, so it does feed our native caterpillars that feed upon grapes, such as the larvae of the Eight-spotted Forester, Abbott’s Sphinx, and Achmon’s Sphinx moths.

 

Still, Porcelain Berry is labeled “invasive”, even though it behaves no differently than our wild grapes in its growth pattern and provides every one of the ecological services listed above. Getting rid of this plant simply destroys yet more wildlife habitat. Does that make sense? No, and I think we should label this concern with alien plants that respond to current environmental conditions by growing well as xenofloraphobia—xeno[alien]flora[plants]phobia[illogical fear of].

NATURE ADVICE:

 

It’s sad to say, but you really need to scrutinize your sources of information regarding the environment if you truly want to do what’s best for wildlife.

 

You might have thought you could trust the Delaware Department of Agriculture, but the subtle wording of their titles (“impact” vs. “benefit”) is absolutely meant to unscrupulously influence your thinking. And when you read the information about Porcelain Berry vs. Wild Grape, there’s yet more deception.

 

The guide tells us that, “The seeds [of Porcelain Berry] are dispersed by birds and small mammals that eat the fruit...”, suggesting this situation is a problem. But, of course, birds and small mammals also spread the seeds of wild grapes when they consume those fruits.

 

Yet, we are told that native grapes are “[o]ne of the most important summer wildlife foods” and the animals are even delineated to illustrate what a great food source wild grapes are! They “are eaten by at least 45 species of birds” as well as “bears, raccoons, opossums, skunks, and even box turtles relish the fruit.”

 

Additionally, “The [wild grape] vine tangles provide nesting cover for many birds, and the strips of bark are frequently used in nest construction.” I’d be surprised if this statement isn’t equally true for Porcelain Berry.

 

The lesson to be learned is that you need to examine closely and thoroughly anything you are told about “invasive” plants. If it’s not logical, don’t believe it. What I’ve pointed out here is just plain common sense.

 

 Wasting Garbage

If people put wasted food into a compost pile, they wouldn’t have so much trouble with bears and raccoons overturning their trash cans. You don’t need a bin to compost; just place scraps into a pile in an out-of-the-way spot away from the house where bears, raccoons, opossums, and other critters can recycle the material by consuming it. Anything they don’t eat will be broken down by microorganisms into rich soil for your garden.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

You may have heard that humans are made of “stardust”. Although you could imagine this ethereal statement springing from some poet’s imagination, it’s quite true. Your body regenerates most of its cells every seven to 15 years, but the elements that comprise those cells have been in existence for millions of millennia.

The hydrogen atoms in your body were produced at the beginning of time when the universe originated with the Big Bang. Carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms were created in burning stars, and the heavy metals or elements essential for human health in trace amounts (such as iron, copper, and zinc) are the result of stars that exploded (supernovae) long ago.

 

In other words, humans and all life forms are dependent upon the recycling of matter, especially that which is organic—carbon-based matter that comes from the remains of other life forms, such as plants and animals and their waste products. Because existing matter must be reused in the creation of new lives, it should never be sent to a landfill where it’s essentially locked away and unavailable.

 

Most landfills contain little dirt, very little oxygen, and therefore few if any microorganisms, which means any biodegradation of the discarded, tightly compacted material takes place extremely slowly. A landfill study conducted by University of Arizona researchers uncovered still-recognizable 25-year-old hot dogs, corn cobs, and grapes, as well as 50-year-old newspapers that could still be read.

 

(Talk, Earth. "Do Biodegradable Items Degrade in Landfills?" ThoughtCo, Oct. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/do-biodegradable-items-really-break-down-1204144.)

 

Yard trimmings that can naturally decompose on their own comprise 6.2% of waste put into landfills. Food, another naturally degradable substance, accounts for another 21.9%. Thus, about a third of landfill deposits consist of organic material that’s trucked from suburban homes, restaurants and other businesses, hospitals, and every sector of society to be buried along with the rest of people’s discarded paraphernalia.

 

Instead, it should be composted, whether at homes with yards, at the landfill, or at special composting facilities. The material of life is not the “garbage” many people consider it to be, a word suggesting organic matter is worthless or useless.

 

Yet it may be difficult to alter people’s feelings about keeping organic material around to decompose on their property. Consider the following exchange from a social media site.

 

A woman posted a photo of a large pile of yard trimmings in her driveway and wanted to let folks know she was looking for someone to take it away. In the background of the photo, you could see a fancy garden of well manicured shrubs and trees with nice wooden fencing delineating the different parts of the landscape.

 

Knowledgeable gardeners would never part with such yard “debris”; they would realize it should be composted to be used to enrich the soil for those garden plants. Indeed, someone immediately suggested just that, while another person wrote in support of that notion and to add that it would be broken down and gone by spring.

 

At this point, yet another lady chimed in to ask which spring (2022? or 2023?) and to make clear it was already summer—the obvious intent of her comment being that she wouldn’t want those yard clippings sitting around in her yard for at least a year or more! For her and the lady who posted the original query, this material simply had no place in their well kept yards. They saw the unwanted organic matter as garbage that would rot and destroy the ambience of the beauty they had painstakingly created.

 

Introducing such folks to the realities of life is the only hope we have of possibly getting them to recognize the many reasons it’s vital to recycle organic matter. Even in space, stardust is recycled.

NATURE ADVICE:

 

Woody yard trimmings can be composted via a brush pile. It’s easy to build one. Simply pile logs and larger debris in the desired location, then add smaller branches, twigs, and even leaves on top of the assemblage. As with a compost pile, rich soil will be found at its base within a few years. Place the pile in a far corner away from the house where you or Mother Nature might plant flowering vines to grow over it.

 

NOTE: A brush pile can provide shelter, nesting areas, and “homes” for numerous kinds of wildlife. During summer, ground-nesting mammals and birds might build nests at the bottom. After the logs have begun to rot, salamanders can hide in them during the day, waiting for the cover of darkness to start hunting for food. If the logs are rotted enough, Eastern Five-lined Skinks and other lizards may lay their eggs there.

 

In winter, the brush pile will be used for shelter from harsh weather and for protection from predators. Birds will forage nearby so that they will have a place to hide if a hawk comes hunting. At night, some of these birds may sleep among the interlocking branches. Amphibians (such as treefrogs), reptiles, and many kinds of insects will spend the cold months in a dormant state inside the rotting logs.

 

The brush pile can also provide a learning experience for children (and adults!). Poke carefully at the decaying tissue and you may find millipedes and pillbugs, all of which dine on dead plant material, thus breaking down the brush pile. Bacteria and fungi are also present, drawing life from the lifeless wood and decomposing it in the process. Lichens (complex plants composed of an alga and a fungus in a symbiotic relationship) grow upon the wood surfaces, releasing a weak acid that breaks down plant tissue. Spiders and centipedes prey upon the scavengers (those organisms feeding on the wood), while skunks, birds, and other predators tear apart the logs in order to make a meal of the variety of creatures living there.

 

A brush pile is valuable in so many ways!

 

Oriental Bittersweet—A Murderer Who Kills by Strangling or Smothering His Victims?!

A Northern Mockingbird defends its larder of Oriental Bittersweet fruits that would help it to survive the winter of 2019-2020.

Thanks to misguided human intervention, the vine was cut on this tree that had stood alongside a dirt road for decades, which resulted in the mockingbird losing its dependable food source for the following winter. The Oriental Bittersweet started to regrow in the spring of 2020 (seen here at bottom up to middle of photo), but wasn’t ready to make fruits by the winter of 2020-2021. How was depriving this bird (and possibly other animals) of food throughout the harshest time of the year helpful to our natural world?

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

A “fact” sheet from the Blue Ridge PRISM (https://blueridgeprism.org/factsheets/), a group whose “mission is to lessen the negative impact of invasive species on both private and public land within 10 counties located in Virginia’s northern Blue Ridge region” (https://blueridgeprism.org/) declares that Oriental Bittersweet “murders forests, strangles trees, [and] smothers [the] understory.”

 

Wow. This statement exemplifies perfectly how people concerned about “invasive” plants tend to employ derogatory accusations to prejudice the reader’s opinion right from the get-go. And that’s not all.

 

Continue reading and you find an emotional essay that, rather than straightforwardly supplying facts, instead infuses this vine with uniquely human behavior: “[T]his attractive vine has an aggressive agenda.” Honestly? For bittersweet to have an “aggressive agenda”, it would have to have brains to carry out a conscious and deliberate plan of assault upon the trees of the forest.

 

This type of barrage—one that accuses so-called invasive plants of behaving in the manner of disreputable human beings—is typical of much nativist rhetoric. It has always struck me as odd because we’re talking about plants.

 

So! Let’s move from the fantasy of plants behaving as if they are bad people to the reality of plants behaving quite naturally as plants.

 

What do plants need to do to perpetuate their species?

 

·    They need to grow to reach maturity; in the case of vines, that growth is usually upwards. Many vining plants cannot flower—which they need to do if they are to reproduce—if forced to grow horizontally.

·    Plants need to get their offspring into the wider world in case catastrophe strikes their original position. This feat is often accomplished with the help of animals that enjoy eating fruits produced by the plant. Whether the animal eats the fruits on the spot or carries them away, the seeds within the fruits may successfully get through the animal’s intestinal tract to land far away from the parent plant, allowing the species to spread for the continuation of its kind.

 

In other words, what people see as an “infestation” is simply a species doing what it must to keep from going extinct. It doesn’t know some people have a problem with that.

 

The aforementioned “fact” sheet notes that Oriental Bittersweet “thrives in disturbed soil and tolerates full sun and dappled shade. It may occur abundantly around old home sites, in fields and fencerows, along road edges, and in forests throughout the Blue Ridge.” The sheet goes on to mention that, “This invasive vine now infests the eastern U.S.” and “has been a serious pest in New England since the 1970’s [sic].”

 

What does this paragraph tell us? It says that rather than being “a real beast” as the fact sheet opines, Oriental Bittersweet is doing what comes naturally: It’s responding to what people do to their environment, a fact pretty-much always overlooked by nativists in their diatribes.

 

Disturbed soil is part and parcel of home sites, fields and fencerows created by people to grow crops, roadways because you can’t make a road without disturbing the land, and forests throughout the Blue Ridge because these mountains were denuded by logging—more than once in the history of the country.

 

And let’s not overlook another fact: People intentionally brought bittersweet here to grow in their gardens. This species is not the “invader” suggested by use of the term “invasive”. It should more accurately be described as an escapee.

 

Is bittersweet problematic? This question can’t be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” because the answer depends completely upon a person’s point of view, which is dependent upon what is most important to him.

 

For the person (such as I) who truly cares about wildlife and disappearing habitat in developed areas, the answer is no. Because most folks maintain very few plants around their homes (and even farms nowadays), there’s not much available for animals (especially birds) in need of food, shelter and nesting sites. Bittersweet that has climbed high into a tree on the edge of someone’s property or along roadways provides these necessities that are absent from most yards (and farms).

 

Does it matter if the vine’s presence kills the tree? In the natural world, there is nothing sacrosanct about a tree, and from the human perspective of someone who wants to help our feathered creatures, it shouldn’t be a problem either if the vine is providing more for wildlife than the tree does.

 

Now, if you’re managing a forest for lumber, your perspective is totally different. Since you look at every tree as a source of income, you want what’s best for your purposes rather than what’s best for wildlife.

 

And what if you’re an environmentalist who wants the natural world to more closely resemble its former self before Europeans arrived? Well, that’s a fantasy that can never become reality. Yes, you can work endlessly on your (and perhaps others’) property to get rid of the many plants people brought here some time ago, but the cat’s out of the bag. It’s a waste of your life, especially if your efforts don’t improve living conditions for wildlife, the main reason often given for “invasive-plant” removal. And if you’re employing pesticides that poison the Earth to accomplish this goal, you’re just adding insult to injury.

Lastly, I’ve been asked if I would be unhappy if a neighbor planted Oriental Bittersweet along my property line where it could spread onto my land. Mother Nature—who’s certainly a neighbor—has done just that, as I find this vine growing here and there around my yard. As it has yet to show up where I could let it grow without it being a problem for my preferred plants, I pull it out if it’s small enough and persistently cut it if it isn’t (so it can’t flower).

 

Gardening is the perpetual process of making decisions about which plants you want to encourage and which you don’t. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling himself.

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

If you believe poisoning (pesticiding) our environment is better than allowing so-called invasive plants to grow, you really ought to rethink your perspective. Instead of buying into denunciations of these plants, get out into the world and observe it carefully with an open mind that will allow you to recognize the truth: The presence of nonnative plants that assist wildlife to survive is far better than the barren area that’s typically left when people remove “invasives”.

 

Few people make an effort to replace the plants removed because they mistakenly believe native plants will (magically) show up. It's possible they might, but the usual reason “invasive” plants grow where they do is because they are more suited than native plants to the environmental conditions in these locations.