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the exotic plants nazi strikes again...
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: the exotic plants nazi strikes again...
- From: Joshua Stuart Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
- Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 16:50:05 -0500 (EST)
- In-reply-to: <a4.1f9a465c.29797a3b@aol.com>
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
>
> << Where can I get some winter honeysuckle? love to
> << get some since I've been having winter hummers.
Hi Carolinabirders,
First, there's no evidence that planting things does either wintering
hummingbirds or us any good. My Rufous Hummingbird last winter showed up
in a neighborhood that was apparently devoid of flowers. This winter,
with a big patch of Pineapple Sage blooming like gangbusters through late
December, I've had nothing. Lori Turner's Green-breasted Mango was
frequenting a yard with very little vegetation beyond a manicured lawn.
Monte Tickle's Broad-tailed seemed to feed mainly on insects. Paulette
Biles already has multiple hummingbirds without having planted anything
yet. I'm beginning to suspect that it was just coincidence that Judy
Walker's Anna's showed up the same year she planted Pineapple Sage. Even
the feeders seem to do more good for us, by bringing the hummers to
predictable and visible places, than they do for the birds, which seem
capable of surviving the winter on bugs and other natural food sources.
Second, Winter Honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), also known as Sweet
Breath of Spring and January Jasmine, is listed by the Southeast Exotic
Pest Plant Council as a Category 1 Species, meaning that it is persistent
and invasive throughout the southeastern US, and it has been shown to
spread into native communities and displace native species. It also means
that the more we plant these things in our yards, the more time and money
our government and private groups like The Nature Conservancy will have
to spend eliminating them from wildlife refuges and nature preserves, and
so the more we will have to pay in taxes and membership dues for this
purpose. That's on top of the money that we spent buying the plants to
start with, that would have been better spent on something native.
Want a second opinion? Winter Honeysuckle is also listed as an invasive
exotic plant to avoid by the North Carolina Botanical Garden, as an
invasive alien plant species by the Virginia state Department of
Conservation and Recreation, as "Weedy" by the Virginia Cooperative
Extension, as an exotic pest plant by the Missouri Botanical Garden, as
an invasive species by the Georgia Wildlife Federation, as an invasive
exotic species by the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences, as an invasive plant by the National Botanical
Services of Canada, and was listed on a "weed alert" as a species that
was spreading rapidly from the National Herbarium of New South Wales.
Some other plants which may attract hummingbirds to feed, but which are
invasive exotic weeds that crowd out native plants and destroy the
habitat for native animals, include Mimosa trees, Lantana bushes (they
don't seem to be much of a problem this far north, but are bad in Florida
and catastrophic in Hawai'i), and Red Morning Glory vines (Ipomoea
coccinea). And some additional plants that may attract a few common
suburban birds to your yard (Cedar Waxwings, Brown Thrashers, etc) and so
are pushed by nurseries as bird attractors, but which are very bad news
for many declining breeding species (Wood Thrush, Swainson's Warbler,
etc), include Oregon Grape (Mahonia sp.), Autumn- and Russian-Olive
(Elaeagnus sp.), Privet (Ligustrum sp.), Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera
japonica), English Ivy (Hedera helix), and assorted others. Don't buy any
of these for your yards, and if you have them already (as I do), you
should do what you can to eliminate them.
If you are considering buying a plant, and want to know whether or not it
is invasive, the North Carolina Botanical Garden's list of plants to
avoid is on-line at
http://www.unc.edu/depts/ncbg/exotic.htm
Or, you can use any search engine (I like Google) and type the plant's
scientific name followed by a word such as "exotic" or "invasive". If the
plant is a problem one, you'll receive numerous results from the websites
of various botanical gardens, government agencies, and native plant
societies.
And if you must have a plant to attract winter hummingbirds, try
Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans). It isn't native to NC, but is at least
native to this continent, I think; and it can't quite survive our few
winter freezes here in NC, so it can't become invasive until Global
Warming changes our climate a bit. You can grow it in a large pot that
you can carry inside on cold winter nights, and by doing so probably
maintain it flowering through the entire winter. Even planted outside in
the dirt, ours flowered lushly until late December, and a few flowers
lingered into January.
Good birding,
Josh
Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)
jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/