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the exotic plants nazi strikes again...



> 
> << 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/