Patriotic Gardening: American plants feed American Critters

You may expect this article to be about planting red, white, and blue flowers for the Fourth of July. For me, patriotic gardening is using American plants in your home landscape to provide food for American wildlife. The term American plants is synonymous with native plants.

The important difference between native plants and plants that originate in other parts of the world is their chemistry and how a plant’s chemistry relates to American insects. The massive number of insects is the key to transferring the sun’s energy from plants through the food web to higher forms of animals.

An Eastern Bluebird catches a caterpillar to feed its young.

An Eastern Bluebird catches a caterpillar to feed its young.

These insects are a major source of protein for wildlife from chickadees to grizzly bears. Parent chickadees do not feed their babies berries or sunflower seeds. They must find 400 to 575 caterpillars a day to feed their nestlings. These caterpillars are found primarily on native plants.

Over millions of years, our American plants and insects have worked out chemical relationships. Plants develop toxins such as latexes, alkaloids, terpenes, and tannins to make their tissues unpalatable. Over time, insects develop enzymes capable of breaking down these chemicals.

After mating, the female luna moth will lay 150 eggs, which provides future caterpillars for baby chickadees and other wildlife. Photo by Lilly Anderson-Messec

After mating, the female luna moth will lay 150 eggs, which provides future caterpillars for baby chickadees and other wildlife. Photo by Lilly Anderson-Messec

Plants from other continents have chemicals that most American insects cannot break down and thus cannot sustain them. A well-known example is the monarch butterfly. Its caterpillar stage of life can eat only milkweed, tolerating the toxins in the leaves and actually incorporating them into its body to make it safe from predation by birds.

Landscape plants from other parts of the world such as azalea, camellia, boxwood, crape myrtle, and ligustrum serve very little function for American insects and thus wildlife farther up the food web. They may provide nectar for a hummingbird or butterfly or berries for birds, but for the most part native insects cannot utilize these landscape plants.

One documented example is the Chinese tallow tree. In China, it is a great native tree where approximately 400 species of insects utilize it for some part of their life cycle. In the southeastern United States, where Chinese tallow is rapidly invading thousands of acres of natural forest, only three species of American insects can feed on the tree. For every alien plant like this that takes up space in our forests or yards, it displaces a valuable American tree or shrub.

Invasive alien plants such as mimosa, kudzu, Japanese privet, Japanese honeysuckle, coral ardisia, Chinese elm, and Chinese camphor that invade our wild lands and park lands is another threat to our native wildlife. In this case, I would posit that to be a patriotic American, we should strive to rid our yards of these stealthy invaders. They occupy space where natives could grow.

The timing is perfect for this early spring blooming native phlox and a newly emerged spicebush swallowtail. Photo by Donna Legare

The timing is perfect for this early spring blooming native phlox and a newly emerged spicebush swallowtail. Photo by Donna Legare

Since we have destroyed 95 percent of natural America with agriculture, cities, and suburban sprawl, we can improve what we have control over – our own yards. As Craig Huegel notes in his book, Native Plant Landscaping for Florida Wildlife, “Do you want your landscaping to be mere window dressing or part of a functioning ecosystem?”

In my own yard, the previous owner landscaped it very nicely, all with traditional non-natives such as boxwood, azaleas, camellias, and podocarpus. Over the past 20 years, we have replaced overgrown, sick, or dead plants with American plants such as wild azaleas, highbush blueberry, Elliott’s blueberry, needle palm, and oakleaf hydrangea.

My yard is not 100 percent “American.” I have kept beautiful large camellias and a sasanqua hedge for privacy. We have a large Japanese magnolia that we work around. I also use some non-native perennials in the hummingbird and butterfly garden, though natives are very important here as well.

The advantage of native perennials or wildflowers is that they bloom when spring begins while most non-natives are still underground in their winter dormancy. When hummingbirds return or butterflies emerge they need flowers and the timing of this is where natives shine.

In our nation’s current divisive political environment, this is one issue we can all come together on. Add a new dimension to your patriotism by adding American plants to your yard. You can increase the percentage of native plants in your yard by just adding one native plant per year!

In his book "Bringing Nature Home," Doug Tallamy calls for creating Suburbia National Park. He states, “Like it or not, gardeners have become important players in the management of our nation’s wildlife… We have not shared space very well with our fellow earthlings.”

Let your yard become a part of Suburbia National Park. Replace some non-native plants with American plants whenever you have the opportunity, and help every type of wildlife from insects to songbirds to mammals. Let’s make America native again.

Garden to Table: Norma's Orange Mint Blondie Recipe

ORANGE MINT

An intensely fragrant mint hybrid also known as Bergamot mint or Eud de Cologne, orange mint is just fantastic in fruit salads, beverages and cookies.

It is one of the prettiest mints with round smooth leaves and an upright habit. Like all mint it likes to be trimmed regularly, so do use it! It is great in a hanging basket or container which will help keep it under control. If let to bloom it attracts beneficial pollinators to the garden.

Ingredients:

  • ½ cup butter

  • 1 egg

  • ½ c brown sugar

  • ¾ c flour

  • ½ t salt

  • 1 t bp

  • ½ t vanilla

  • ½ c chopped nuts

  • good handful of fresh chopped orange mint

Method:

Melt the butter and brown sugar together, stir in the dry ingredients, add the vanilla and nuts. Add a pinch of water if it seems too dry. Bake in 8” pan ( or cast iron skillet) at 350 for 20-25”. Don't over bake.

Really tasty with vanilla chocolate chip ice cream!

Firefly conservation starts at home — in our yards and in our parks

Fireflies, also known as lightning bugs, are neither flies nor true bugs. They are beetles, and like ladybugs, are cherished as one of our most well-loved insects.

Who hasn’t chased after a fading green blink as dusk descends? Most people have fond memories of running after flashing fireflies. Some may miss the summer nights when it seemed the whole night was lit up by bright flickers.

It is becoming more difficult for these insects to survive in our world; their numbers are dwindling due to habitat loss and degradation, light pollution, pesticide use and climate change.

But just as people attract butterflies to their yards, we can work to provide for and attract fireflies.

My daughter took a course at the University of Florida on the natural history of fireflies. It was taught by Dr. James Lloyd, who made a life’s career studying these intriguing creatures. She learned that just as there are many distinct butterfly species, there are also many firefly species, including 45 species found in Florida.

Fireflies have developed an amazing method of communicating using bioluminescence. Each species has a unique code, or flash pattern, that they use to find a mate of their species. Fireflies need darkness to see and understand their fellows’ flashes.

As individuals, we can turn off all outdoor lights around our houses, including flood lights, porch lights and garage lights. For security and safety, try using a motion-detection fixture. As a neighborhood, we can ask the city to put shields over streetlights to direct the light onto roads and away from yards and natural areas.

To attract a diverse firefly population, it is critical to provide a diversity of habitats. For example, some species live in the upper branches of trees (Photuris versicolor and Pyractomena borealis), others live in shrub layers (Photinus sanguineus and Pyractomena angulate), and still others live in grassy openings (Photinus collustrans).

At home, we can allow edges of our yards to grow up into shrubby areas or plant shrubs at the edge of a lawn. Better yet, if you like a more natural look to your yard, stop mowing a patch of your lawn and allow wildflowers and grasses to establish there, mowing it once a year. City and county park managers could promote a variety of habitats from open woodlands to grassy meadows just through proper mower management.

Leave some corners of your yard a little wild. The larvae of fireflies thrive in moist habitats with abundant native vegetation and dense leaf litter. Think somewhat woodsy with tall trees, medium trees, shrubs, native ferns and leaf mulch. This type of yard provides habitat for snails, slugs, earthworms and other invertebrates that ground-dwelling firefly larvae need to eat.

This type of habitat also provides safe places for firefly larvae to overwinter. Some overwinter in crevasses on tree bark, while others live in underground burrows or in rotting logs or leaf litter.

Fireflies are insects, so they are susceptible to lawn chemicals. Fireflies may be most vulnerable during their larval stage, which can last up to two years. Adult fireflies may only be active for a few weeks in spring and summer.

Larvae of Photuris, Photinus and Pyractomena genus spend time in the soil, where chemicals filtering down produce potentially disastrous effects on firefly populations. Individuals and park managers should avoid using pesticides (insecticides and herbicides) on lawns and woodlands.

We can enjoy lightning bugs for the first time or again after many years, if we take the initiative to invite them back into our yards, neighborhoods and cities by offering them the habitat they need to survive right alongside our homes. Leave the leaves, turn off the lights, and refrain from regular use of insecticides and herbicides.

Go outside and enjoy the night in late spring and early summer. Chase a firefly and let it alight upon your hand. Look at it closely, watch it glow, and let it fly away into the dark night.

For more information, visit the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation’s Conserving the Jewels of the Night page at xerces.org/endangered-species/fireflies.