Urgent Need for Native Plants - Doug Tallamy
Doug Tallamy packs auditoriums everywhere he speaks
and last week he had a crowd of 250 with standing room only at the Tulsa Garden
Center.
Tallamy is America’s hero of the movement to save
humans by restoring the natural food web, one back yard garden, public space
and corporate green space at a time.
Dozens of research studies have pointed to the
emotional and physical health benefits of plant corridors over mowed spaces but
Tallamy’s knowledge and passion push participants to feel an urgency to make a commitment,
no matter how small.
Whether you have some control over a public area or
a residential neighborhood space, Tallamy suggests that you select plants that
support and improve life.
The building blocks of habitat are bunching grasses
instead of lawn grasses that need to be mowed, shrubbery that wildlife can use
rather than useless ones, and beneficial canopy and understory trees.
Every
patio, front yard, park, fence line and community can begin to create food web
friendly habitats.
Insects and plants have co-evolved to have a mutually
beneficial arrangement so that now ninety percent of all insects can raise
their young only on specific plants. Imported, European and Asian plants are
alien to native insects and other wildlife.
By estimate, there are 45-million acres of lawn
being sprayed and mowed; none of it provides food for wildlife
Why should you care enough to plant habitat where
you once grew lawn? Two examples: There
are only 3% as many Monarch butterflies as there were 30 years ago and 50%
fewer songbirds than there were 40 years ago.
Plants and animals in the food-web are the building
blocks and rivets of life as we know it. When
animals face reduced
bio-diversity, humans also face reduced conditions because plants and animals
create the clean water, oxygen, pest control and pollination that we need to
survive.
Some of the landscape plants to avoid: Ginko biloba
trees, Crape myrtle shrubs, Euonymous burning bush, Chinese wisteria, Japanese
mimosa, Russian olive, Bradford pear and Chinese photinia. None of these
imports provide any benefit to the food web, and there are over 3,000 of them
being promoted to gardeners.
All varieties of oak trees help the food web, giving
food and shelter to over 500 insect species. Those insects in turn feed birds, control
garden pests, and pollinate fruits, vegetables and flowers.
Tallamy’s underlying message is to plant more insect
food. One example he gave is that Ginko trees support 3 insects while native Prunus
(plum and cherry) trees and shrubs support 500 insect varieties.
Clean farming methods use pesticides and herbicides
to produce the most food. In the process, native plant green belts have been
lost. Since that probably will not change soon enough in any significant way,
public spaces and our gardens are all that’s left for the natural world,
according to Tallamy.
When talking about the need for natives, Tallamy
pointed out that Asian imports often leaf out earlier in the spring. If you think
of a plant’s leaves as its mouth for collecting sun, this small difference
means that food web plants do not have a chance to achieve spring growth before
they are covered up.
“Bringing Nature Home”, Tallamy’s 2007 book (www.bringingnaturehome.net),
has charts of plants that best support the food web. The US Forest Service
provided funding for his office to create a list of the most beneficial plants
for every county in the country. It will be available Jan 2016 on the National
Wildlife Federation website at www.nwf.org.
Video of Tallamy’s 2015 presentation http://hort.li/1GDw
Tallamy's plant list by region is at http://udel.edu/~dtallamy/new_xls/webplants.xls
Tallamy's plant list by region is at http://udel.edu/~dtallamy/new_xls/webplants.xls
While there is no call to tear out your existing
shrubs and lawn, there is an urgency to put in native plants among them. For regional suggestions visit
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