The Home Garden: A Primer in Dysfunction

Pillbugs (also known as Roly-poly Bugs or Woodlice), are often found underneath flower pots. They are not insects, but rather, land crustaceans. Their function in the environment is to help recycle dead plant and animal matter, which is why you see them in association with planter pots. Yet, extension offices often refer to them as “pests” and tell gardeners to get rid of them! Ignorance of the true roles of our fellow life forms endangers the proper functioning of the environment that supports all of us.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

From 2002-2014, I gave monthly talks each summer in Shenandoah National Park. Most of the questions after each talk were from gardeners wanting to know how to prevent the trouble they encountered with this animal or that one.

 

At first this situation puzzled me. I’d gardened throughout my adult life and never encountered these many problems. I puzzled over it following each presentation, until I realized people had these difficulties because they ignored the fact that their gardens exist in the natural world. Thus, you have no choice but to follow natural laws, as I had always done.

 

Unfortunately, folks don’t like that answer. They want to continue doing their gardening in whatever manner they please, as if the natural world is going to bend to their will. Except it won’t. And therein lies the reason gardeners who ignore my philosophy (as they would see it; I see it as presenting a fact of life) are doomed to rant forevermore about various kinds of wildlife that are problematic for them.

 

So, let’s look at just a few of the “truisms” in gardening lore that not only make unnecessary work for the gardener, but are also detrimental to wildlife and the environment.

 

As summer draws to a close and fall arrives, gardening experts issue the same axiom year after year: Clean up your garden to keep pest problems at a minimum. However, if you have a yard that’s wildlife friendly, this task is totally unnecessary. It deprives many organisms of needed winter food and cover, and over time, bankrupts the soil nutrition available for growing plants.

 

While it’s true that some insects overwinter as adults or eggs in plant stalks, it’s also true that many animals will find these insects and eat them. Wrens and woodpeckers will come to bird feeders to get sunflower seeds, but they mainly subsist upon insects all the year around. They can be in big trouble if we have a harsh winter with lots of snow. But, if you leave plants standing, especially tall ones, these birds gain a better chance of surviving because they may find insects or their eggs on the stems rising above snow level.

 

Deer Mice also eat insects. While you probably care more about birds than these mammals—thinking all rodents are “pests”—consider that mice help to replant our forests and grasslands. They are Mother Nature’s gardeners, carrying seeds back to their nests and dropping some along the way that may then grow where they fell.

 

It’s easy to overlook the fact that every creature does its part to keep the other parts of the ecosystem functioning properly, but humans need to recognize this actuality. Even though you don’t want mice in your house, you should certainly welcome them outdoors, and not only because they are inadvertent gardeners. Mice are a prime food source for owls, foxes, and coyotes.

 

A gardening myth is that you must keep your plants totally “bug-free” to keep them healthy. Healthy plants can withstand a few insects chewing or sucking on them. Remember, plants exist to feed animals (“Marlene’s Axiom”). There’s no need to run for insecticide at the first sign of a few six-legged critters, especially as many of these insects will be eaten if you’ve created a yard that welcomes predators.

 

For example, many gardeners worry about aphids, yet they are unlikely to cause significant damage in a yard full of birds. Hummingbirds, especially, require such tiny insects to obtain protein and fat for good health. Remove aphids and you remove a significant food source for these energetic creatures.

 

You’ve probably also heard that you shouldn’t allow your plants to go to seed. According to Penn State Extension: “When dead blooms are left clinging to flowering plants, they sap the nutrition and strength from the core of the plants and rob them of the energy to produce new and colorful blooms.”

 

https://extension.psu.edu/to-deadhead-or-not-your-final-answer-is

 

Nonsense! A plant’s ultimate “goal” is to reproduce, so it’s well adapted to making seeds and continuing to bloom (if in its DNA) and grow each year. Spend time deadheading (removing all “spent” blooms) and you perform busywork that deprives your local wildlife of seeds.

 

Lastly, anywhere you plan to cover bare ground with mulch, you should instead let some “weeds” grow. They serve as your natural mulch. Rather than stealing water, they keep the ground shaded to prevent moisture loss, and many turn into lovely flowers that provide beauty for the gardener, nectar for hummingbirds, butterflies, and/or numerous other kinds of insects, and possibly seeds for birds and small mammals when left standing throughout fall and winter.

 

Save time and energy by gardening in a more relaxed manner, and you’ll help our wildlife while you’re at it. Your reward will be the opportunity to watch nature at work instead of you!

 

 NATURE ADVICE:

 

Instead of taking away the fallen leaves of woody plants, you really should rake them around the main stem and out to the limit of the plant’s branches. Shrubs and trees provide their own mulch free of charge. The leaves they drop are Mother Nature’s way of returning “borrowed” nutrients to the soil (when the leaves decompose) from which they came.

 

If you prefer the look of woody mulch, keep the spent leaves and just place the woody mulch over them. But remember: The woody mulch needs to decompose (all organic matter is supposed to be recycled in nature), so if you see mushrooms or other kinds of fungi growing upon the mulch, leave them be! They won’t be visible long, and these decomposers are doing their job of returning nutrients to the soil so you don’t need to spend money, time, and effort fertilizing your growing plants.

 

Fighting A Losing Battle against Lawns, Pesticides, Lights, and Attitudes towards Plants and Wildlife

Even as the grass was turning brown (going dormant) and not growing due to a severe drought this past summer, the mowing needlessly continued along my road.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

When I left the house in pre-dawn darkness this morning to exercise, I expected a pleasant, peaceful walk, with the only sounds being that of birds singing and chirping as they awoke. But no, despite the very early hour, what should come roaring up behind me on the roadway but three huge riding lawn mowers, moving from one section of a large property to another. They were still mowing when I returned more than an hour later!

 

Unfortunately, I don’t live far from some extremely wealthy people, all of whom maintain huge amounts of lawn. They mow every single week, regardless of whether the grass even needs it—such as during this recently past summer, when my area suffered the worst drought I’ve lived through in the 45 years I’ve resided in Virginia. The mowing didn’t stop taking place until the overly short grass turned completely brown and was obviously not growing.

 

Compounding the impact of all this mowing is the fact that the less well-off living nearby feel required to mow their own lawns lest they be viewed as socially inferior if they don’t follow the example set for them by the well-heeled. As a result, every house with a lawn along the entire length of my road gets mowed within the span of the same few days.

 

Maintaining a lawn doesn’t contribute to the wellbeing of wildlife. The act of mowing kills animals as it chops anything to bits that gets caught in the blades. Mowing cuts “weed” flower heads, such as dandelions and clovers, immediately depriving pollinators of a source of food. Pesticides are expressly employed for killing organisms living there. And, of course, the air and water pollution as a result of running a small engine impacts humans as well as wildlife.

 

This scenario is repeated over and over throughout the country. Consequently, I’ve come to the conclusion that we will never be able to save the natural world because so many folks continue to maintain an excessive amount of lawn, even in this time of “enlightenment”.

 

Radio and television gardening shows, and gardening columns and books, all exhort people to do away with as much lawn as possible, yet I see no real movement in this direction. Over the past few decades, an increase in the acreage devoted to lawns and the necessary mowing to maintain them has become more widespread, in fact.

 

Adding to my despair is the incredible amount of pesticide usage, not only included in lawn and garden maintenance, but also inside people’s homes. Neighborhood blogs make appallingly clear how often pest control companies are being called by homeowners.

 

If the “problem” is insect-related, you can rest assured poisonous chemicals are going to be employed, often both inside and out. If the “problem” is a mammal or reptile simply visiting the premises or trying to reproduce there, pest control folks will trap and kill it (it’s against the law in Virginia and many states to relocate wild animals), although these companies often tell folks they are not going to dispatch the animals.

Then there are the unnecessary lights. Lamp fixtures burn 24/7 outside numerous homes and barns, not only in my local area but anywhere I travel. Parking lots and buildings are often so illuminated at night that it seems to be daytime.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that the ubiquitous amount of lighting in society is responsible for the dearth of moths and thus the dearth of caterpillars (there are far more species of moths than butterflies). Moths are supposed to be mating at night, but instead they are attracted to, and hang around, all the lights out there.

 

When moths don’t procreate, they don’t produce caterpillars, which in turn results in fewer moths. It’s a vicious circle that has been going around for so long that moths are practically nonexistent these days. No amount of native-plant landscaping is going to bring back animals driven to near-extinction by lighting that, rather than diminishing, is increasing along with development.

 

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, the negative attitude of most people towards wildlife is hard to change. Far too much of the populace has become completely intolerant of having wildlife anywhere near where they live, perhaps because ignorance breeds fear, and nowadays few folks have any real understanding of and connection to wildlife. They’ve grown up in a bubble full of people and sanitized surroundings where wildlife is demonized.

 

The lack of knowledge of our natural world even extends to plants, which ends up adding yet more pesticides to the environment and taking away yet more habitat from wildlife as people get rid of what they see as undesirable plants.

 

An entire mythology has been created about so-called invasive plants. The resultant zeal to remove them is yet one more assault upon the environment that harms wildlife. Whether it’s spraying poisons upon plants or cutting them down (or often, both), habitat is destroyed. It’s beyond my comprehension how anyone can see these actions as beneficial to our natural world.

 

I can only conclude that I have been basically fighting a losing battle. After expending much time and effort over the past 28-plus years to get folks to better understand nature, I’m losing heart. However, I am not totally giving up (yet!). I’m working on two books I’d like to see published, and I need time to work further on that front.

 

Therefore, I plan to start posting once a month instead of every two weeks. This post serves as the commentary for the month of October. After that, I’ll post on the first Saturday of each month.

 

 NATURE ADVICE:

 

If you care about the natural world and haven't been “activating”, as I like to say, please start. Far too often, I’ve been a lone voice for the natural world, and that just doesn’t cut it.

 

Politicians and people in charge of natural areas don’t listen to a lone voice in the wilderness; they do listen when many voices speak as one. That’s the very reason the “invasive” plant folks have been able to infiltrate government and local neighborhoods. They’ve gathered a crowd of like-minded cohorts to spread their mythology far and wide, which gives it a semblance of credibility it doesn’t deserve.

 

I hope many of you will take up, or continue, the good fight. It’s vitally important not only for the natural world, but also for the benefit of mankind.

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.