Non-native Plants Can Be Remarkably Nature-friendly, Part One

When home construction destroys the soil profile, it’s difficult for native plants to take root. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)

Many people have taken to heart the words of Doug Tallamy (the entomologist who wrote Bringing Nature Home) to grow native plants because many native leaf-eating insects depend upon them.

They’ve also been moved by his statement that “aggressive plant species from other continents…were rapidly replacing what native plants” were on the rural property he and his wife had purchased. Now people consider it a truism that non-native plants simply move into an area and push out native species.

But Mr. Tallamy’s presumption was made without consideration of the prior history of his newly acquired parcel. The Tallamys had purchased land that “had been farmed for centuries before being sold and subdivided.” What had actually happened was that alien plants colonized barren, abandoned, nutrient-poor farmland with a disturbed soil profile—something I’ve watched happen in Virginia since I was a college student in the 1970s.

At that time, the Eastern Redcedar (Juniperous virginiana) was the bane of many a cow farmer because these native trees constantly tried to move into their fields of compacted soil bereft of organic matter (other than cow pies) for who knows how long. This phenomenon was, and still is, something that can be observed, especially along I-81. Over the years, I’ve gotten off the highway numerous times to document it in photos.

By the 1980s, cow fields along I-81 were beginning to be abandoned. I noticed how they filled eventually—I’m talking years—with either redcedars or non-native Autumn Olive shrubs (Eleagnus umbellata), or a mix of both. Doug Tallamy’s land had likewise taken years to become “at least 35%” non-native vegetation because he mentions removing Oriental Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)—vines considered invasive—that had 6-inch-caliper trunks. That size isn’t reached overnight.

Therefore by the time he started to remove non-native plants, they’d had time to accomplish some degree of soil rehab, which is why some native trees could grow at that point. He can be forgiven his misperception because, unless you’ve been paying attention for decades, as I have, you won’t have a clue about this process.

The fact is that most yards are rather similar to cow fields, except that their soil profile has been totally rearranged by land clearing and grading. This was, in fact, the situation when I moved into my house almost 30 years ago.

The cleared and re-graded land had exposed gray clay subsoil in most of the yard. As someone who’d been enthralled by astronomy since the age of seven, I couldn’t help thinking my back yard looked like the surface of the Moon! The rest of the yard consisted of the more-typical Virginia red clay.

Obviously there was no way that I could personally improve such a large amount of soil for the sake of native plants. It would take years of rehabilitation, mostly executed by non-native plants that didn’t mind one bit growing in a disturbed soil profile.

Thanks to alien plants, my moonscape very quickly became a nature-friendly garden that supported an incredible diversity and abundance of wildlife—even more so than had existed here when the land was deeply shaded by forest.

I’d spent time on the property throughout the seasons to document wildlife usage before a small area was cleared where my house was to be built. I discovered that it’s a myth that mature forest is the pinnacle of wildlife abundance.

The reality is that it supports nowhere near the amount of life that a field (or meadow) habitat is capable of supporting—and a field habitat is exactly what most yards can be easily transformed into! Although you may immediately think “ugly” when envisoning a field, you shouldn’t.

When I talk about creating field habitat around your house, I’m referring to the incorporation of the qualities of a field: an open area with a large variety and number of herbaceous plants, surrounded by shrubs and trees to create edge.

I am not implying that your yard must be totally wild and unkempt, although the more natural it is, the better it will provide for life. Rest assured, a nature-friendly garden can be very nice looking.

Even though many species of native plants have naturally moved into my yard over the decades as the soil has improved, I would never completely remove the alien plants I deliberately brought into the yard many years ago. They are so beneficial to wildlife that, in fact, they have sometimes been life-saving.

Several years ago, deer consumed most of the native herbaceous plants in my yard and took most of the leaves off small native shrubs and trees. As a result, the denuded woody plants were unable to produce fruits. To add insult to injury, the following winter was very cold and snowy, which meant fruit-eating birds were in desperate straits.

But luckily for a flock of bluebirds that visited my yard that winter, my Japanese Barberries (Berberis thunbergii)—shrubs that deer do not normally feed upon—held numerous small red berries which the birds consumed over the course of a few days.

Japanese Barberry can spread and is thus considered invasive, yet it can’t be denied that those bluebirds—a species that is not commonly seen in my yard—were aided by it. They were obviously on the move, desperately seeking food which they found on my deer-ravaged property where only some kinds of alien plants had been left alone by the hoofed browsers.

Indeed, the many years of overpopulated deer herds have played a significant role in the enablement of so-called invasive plants. By keeping areas cleared of native plants, deer created opportunities for alien plants to move in. In actuality, the invasive-plant situation cannot be dealt with realistically until deer numbers are truly kept in balance with the environment.

I’ve seen far more wildlife—both in species and in numbers—in my yard over the past three decades than most folks will ever see in a lifetime of visiting wildlife refuges and national parks. As a result, I know that non-native plants are not only beneficial to wildlife, but also to soil rehabilitation that allows native plants to show up when conditions are suitable for their survival.

There are certainly situations in which alien plants shouldn’t be introduced, but most yards don’t fall into that category. In a world overrun by humans, with wildlife struggling to survive on our terms, it’s foolish to suggest that non-native plants should be removed (usually by using herbicides) on private property that is in no condition to support native plants.

It’s a myth that non-native plants do not provide adequate food, shelter, and nesting sites for many kinds of wildlife; in fact, many non-native plants are remarkably nature-friendly.

In part two of this article, I’ll discuss five woody non-native plants in my yard that have been the most valuable to the critters in my area. I’m sure you’ll be surprised.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Non-native Plants Can Be Remarkably Nature-friendly, Part One

Non-native Plants Can Be Remarkably Nature-friendly, Part Two

Despite what horticultural lore says, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers do no lasting harm to healthy trees and shrubs when they make their shallow wells to obtain sap. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)

Not all non-native plants are created equal, nor are all yards suitable for their introduction. If you live near a natural area that is composed primarily of native plants, or if you live near wetlands, then you certainly should try to avoid growing alien plants that might spread into these relatively un-degraded areas.

However, if you want to start helping wildlife even though your yard consists mostly of subsoil, which is not very conducive to the growth of native plants, there are numerous alien plants that are already part-and-parcel of our environment that are wonderfully nature-friendly. I’ll start with three non-native woody plants I originally chose for their red foliage—my favorite color.

When I planted Chinese Photinia (Photinia serrulata), I had no idea how valuable this multi-stemmed shrub would be to wildlife and my wildlife viewing. In winter, Dark-eyed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows sleep among the branches, being replaced by Northern Cardinals and Eastern Phoebes in spring. I’ve even had an Eastern Screech Owl perch in there while waiting for darkness to descend on late-winter and very early-spring days.

What I’ve found most interesting, however, is the heavy use of these plants by Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Birds of the north that migrate to Virginia for the winter, these woodpeckers use their beaks to drill small holes (“wells”) into the bark of trees from which sap oozes. This sweet liquid provides them with carbohydrates, a source of quick energy.

Sapsuckers have visited my photinias regularly throughout the decades and it’s obvious. An inspection of the trunks reveals rows and rows of old and new sap wells, an undeniable sign of the affinity these birds possess for photinia sap. But they aren’t the only ones that want a sweet drink! Tufted Titmice, Carolina Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, flying insects (on warmish winter days), and even Gray Squirrels visit the wells.

And as if this wildlife usage wasn’t enough, the small white spring flowers attract so many bees that you can hear the loud buzzing well before you are within sight of the plants, and the resulting red fruits feed birds and mammals come fall.

My plants are almost 30 years old but have never produced a seedling, so Chinese Photinia is not likely to spread of its own accord. I should warn you that the flowers don’t smell very good, but because the blooming time is rather short, it’s not something you have to put up with for a long time.

Lastly, to take advantage of all of the benefits these plants offer to wildlife, they should be allowed to grow into their natural shape and height (up to 30 feet tall), rather than grown as a constantly sheared hedge, as is so often done. Photinia hedges are almost invariably doomed to leaf spot (caused by a fungus) because the pruning causes a thick growth of leaves that can’t get good air circulation to dry them.

It should also be noted that pruning is injurious and really shouldn’t be done unless it’s absolutely necessary. Woody plants can handle a bit of pruning because they’ve evolved with animals that feed upon them, which of course, prunes them. But too much feeding by animals or pruning by people can kill plants.

I love the red leaves of Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum), but I also love its value to wildlife, which came as quite a surprise and delight!

When the trees’ buds start to swell, they are ready to be eaten by Gray Squirrels and White-throated Sparrows that visit often. The buds they miss develop into blooms that bring the insects swarming: flies, wasps, a multitude of tiny bees, and butterflies, such as the Spring Azure and Tiger Swallowtail. The resulting seeds are eaten by Gray Squirrels.

Japanese Maples are very slow-growing trees, so you’ll be resigned to enjoying only their beauty until their wildlife potential develops.

I first became familiar with Burning Bush (Euonymus alatus) when I was a college student at Virginia Tech. A yard I walked by on my way to town had a huge specimen that was spectacular in the fall when its leaves turned a bright red. I knew I had to have one of these plants some day when I was permanently settled somewhere!

Although bashed as an invasive plant, Burning Bush is useful to many kinds of animals. The little yellow spring blooms attract a variety of tiny insects, especially bees. Small winged fruits develop that feed Northern Cardinals and White-throated Sparrows as well as Gray Squirrels. And in late winter, Dark-eyed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows visit daily to feed on the enlarging buds.

I’ve observed White-tailed Deer eating the leaves of Burning Bush. However, they only began to feed on this plant in the past few years as deer numbers were exploding in Virginia, suggesting it’s not a preferred food plant for them.

Burning Bush is originally from Asia and can indeed spread. But my own yard is so full of plants that most so-called invasive plants struggle to stay put, never mind increase in number (the reason I know experientially that these plants need a cleared area before they can start growing somewhere). If Burning Bush could be troublesome in your area, you probably shouldn’t grow one in your yard.

The Summer 2012 issue of the Butterfly Gardener was devoted to “The Great Butterfly Bush Debate” in which two butterfly gardeners took opposing stands on whether or not people should grow Buddleia davidii. This shrub, which has been widely planted as a nectar source for butterflies, is yet another plant from Asia that has spread beyond the gardener’s gate by way of seed production.

I have a Butterfly Bush that certainly does bring in butterflies. It does make seeds, but I’ve yet to find a seedling in my yard. Where I have seen this plant as an escapee from the home garden is along miles and miles of train tracks, which isn’t surprising. Just like other plants that are referred to as invasive, Butterfly Bush can tolerate the wretched growing conditions provided courtesy of the railroad companies.

Luckily, you don’t need to grow Butterfly Bush. If you want a shrub attractive to butterflies (and bees), I highly recommend Glossy Abelia (Abelia x grandiflora) as a substitute. Developed from plants native to Asia and Mexico, this hybrid does not make seeds and thus does not move out of the area. It blooms from spring until frost, making it the perfect substitute for Butterfly Bush if your yard has poor soil.

Shrubs and small trees, unlike flower beds, do not take much effort to maintain. If you want to help wildlife without a lot of fuss and bother, by all means grow woody plants such as the ones I’ve mentioned here (with the exception, perhaps, of Burning Bush).

But to bring in the highest number of wildlife species, you require flower beds that contain a diverse array of plants in abundance, whether they are native or naturalized (which is really what “invasive” means). The easiest way to find out what will grow best in your soil is to clear a bed for plants and see what comes up. Those are the plants best suited to your growing situation and that will provide for wildlife.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Non-native Plants Can Be Remarkably Nature-friendly, Part Two

Cats and Predators

The author—who has often been accused of disliking cats because she’s honest about their behavior—is seen here on her 21st birthday with Priscilla, the family cat. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

One summer day when I was a young girl of about 10 or 11, I was in the back yard when our pet cat brought home a nestling Blue Jay. The dead chick was naked (without feathers) and therefore it had probably only recently hatched.

I immediately brought the cat into the house. Growing up with one or more cats at a time living with us, I knew all about their behavior. Cats were killers of all kinds of wildlife, from insects to mice to birds and anything else they could catch.

(This isn’t a statement to demonize these felines. It’s simply a statement of pure fact. Anyone who tries to say that cats are not eager hunters that are extremely proficient at this activity is either being dishonest or is ignorant of cat behavior.)

Unfortunately, any cat that has ever been allowed outside is a cat that can never be kept inside, especially when it knows there is a nest of baby birds to plunder. The cat will meow and meow until someone lets it out and that is exactly what happened at my house.

One of my siblings or parents, being annoyed by the cat’s crying, let it out again—and again and again as I kept bringing it back inside each time it brought home one nestling, then another and another until it had killed the entire brood of five chicks.

At the time, my only feeling about this was one of extreme sadness because I felt there was no reason for the baby birds to have been killed. The cat didn’t need to kill to survive and, indeed, pet cats rarely eat what they catch.

But now, as an adult with much more knowledge, I realize the tragedy was far worse than just having the lives of those five young birds cut short for no good reason. Another aspect concerns the Blue Jay pair, which often mates for life.

The male and female had invested an incredible amount of energy and time into gathering twigs and other plant materials and building their intricate nest, not to mention the huge amount of energy that goes into bringing forth another life inside each egg.

All of that effort had been for naught. In fact, this activity is so energy-and-time consuming that Blue Jays typically nest only one time per year. Thus the entire reproductive potential of that pair may have been robbed that summer.

As time has marched on, I’ve watched our “civilized” world become more and more inhospitable to wildlife. It’s quite frightening because our lives are totally dependent upon a properly functioning natural world. And that world can only be kept running smoothly by the wildlife that people, generally speaking, show so little appreciation for.

There’s nothing wrong with having an affection for cats, especially if you show that affection by keeping your kitty indoors where it won’t get hurt or killed horribly as most of the cats of my early years did.

At that time, when both cats and dogs were allowed to run free, I was horrified one day to see a dog with a lifeless cat hanging out of its mouth and I often witnessed dogs and cats run over by traffic.

Yet all these years later, there are people who continue to think that pets should be allowed to roam free. I truly find it hard to understand.

They often try to justify their belief by suggesting that cats are a part of nature and predation is natural. But this argument is fallacious.

No native predators (which cats are not) would be anywhere near as numerous in the environment as cats that are companions to an overly abundant human population. And, adding insult to injury, some people assist feral cat colonies that are outdoors 24/7 and truly taking an enormous toll upon the natural world.

Some folks think that cats should be considered helpful to gardeners, but this idea is particularly egregious. It’s based upon a lack of understanding of our natural world. In point of fact, pure and simple, gardeners who experience problems in the yard are doing things incorrectly.

When you choose to ignore the reality of the universe, you choose to have difficulties because you are choosing to ignore natural laws. Humans are not God; they have no power to successfully alter the way the world works.

Contrary to horticultural belief, “pest problems” are not a given. It should not be considered normal to encounter a variety of critters attacking your garden and interfering with your desire to grow favorite plants.

I know because I’ve successfully grown enough fruits and vegetables to eat fresh, give away to friends and neighbors, and to can and freeze without ever employing pesticides. The same is true of the ornamental plants I’ve grown, the number of species of which are too numerous for me to even estimate.

Consider the idea that cats will put an end to the activities of voles and bunnies. Yes, they certainly will have an effect because cats may very well wipe out every bunny in the area and make quite a dent in vole populations.

But a gardener who wants this outcome to occur is also a gardener who is blind to the impact his pet is having upon the natural world—and his garden.

Those voles (a type of mouse) are not just an important food source for other kinds of critters, such as hawks, owls, and foxes; they are also aerators of the soil you grow your plants in. By digging burrows they allow air and water—both of which are essential for plant roots to grow—to enter the earth.

Yes, voles do eat grasses and forbs (herbaceous flowering plants other than grasses, sedges, and rushes). In the natural world, one of their roles is to help limit plant numbers so plants do not become overcrowded.

I have voles on my property, yet they have never been problematic. Why? I also have numerous kinds of snakes that I rarely see, but they keep vole numbers so limited that the chunky creatures do not pose a serious threat to my gardening efforts. In fact, and to my dismay, I hardly ever get to see a vole.

Snakes are the prime predators of voles and everyone who’s ever told me about vole problems have been people who have killed off these sinuous reptiles. As pointed out previously, these are people denying the reality of the universe.

And the idea that you need cats to kill bunnies that are so adorable to see is ridiculous. Vegetable gardens should always be fenced. (It’s called living in agreement with nature.) Flower gardens can be made less attractive to rabbits by simply allowing so-called “weeds,” such as Common Plantain that they prefer to eat, to grow in the lawn.

A lawn should not be a monoculture for its own best health and well being anyway.

Allow White Clover to grow—which Eastern Cottontail Rabbits also prefer to eat instead of flowers—and it will collect nitrogen from the air and fix it in the soil, naturally fertilizing your grass. Then you don’t need to go to the expense of buying and applying petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizer, too much of which is often applied, which then runs off and harms the Chesapeake Bay.

In other words, create a nature-friendly garden and you will be not only a successful gardener, but a gardener at peace with the world and virtually every wild critter in it.
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Put in a Pond for Wildlife

This artificial pond in the author’s side yard teems with numerous kinds of wildlife all year round. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

I know warm weather is on the way when I hear a Wood Frog beginning to call in my yard where I have two small artificial ponds. These cold-tolerant, hardy little amphibians give me my first clue from the animal world that spring is coming, long before the American Robins that most people associate with this particular season. (In point of fact, some robins may be in the area all winter.)

Wood Frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus, formerly Rana sylvatica) inhabit woods, but in late winter they come out of hibernation with mating on their minds. This is the best, and almost only, time you are likely to spot Wood Frogs as they come to shallow pools to breed. They will also use deeper ponds if they can attach their globular egg masses to underwater plant stems near the surface to prevent the eggs from sinking into the depths of the pond.

Many amphibian species are losing ground nowadays as wetlands are destroyed by public construction projects and by citizens on private property. Although scientists recognize the value of wetlands, most people do not. Folks tend to want to drain and fill in such areas, but this wipes out the breeding grounds for many species of wildlife.

You can make a difference by putting in a pond for wildlife and it doesn’t even need to be particularly large. The little pond in my front yard is only about 2½ feet wide and about 4 feet long. The one in my side yard is about 3 feet by 6 feet.

A pond brings in frogs, dragonflies, salamanders, and other water-loving creatures to your yard where they will help control the numbers of insects for you. I’ve watched frogs catch flies at the pond and wander around on wet days to eat insects off the plants in my nearby flowerbed. Dragonflies chase after gnats, sometimes right around your head!

Whenever I mention yard ponds in a talk, the first question I get from most people is, “Won’t a pond bring in mosquitoes?” Yes, of course it will.

But if mosquitoes lay eggs in your pond that is full of mosquito predators instead of on those rain-dampened tarps or water-filled children’s toys in your yard, the eggs will get eaten instead of producing an abundance of these biting insects.

Select a site that is easily accessible to a spigot (for refills) and is in a location where you can look at it often. Otherwise you’ll miss all of the activity!

Try to place the pond in a level area so that runoff will not normally collect in it. This is especially important if runoff might contain contaminants that can poison the plants and animals in your pond.

The pond should receive at least six or more hours of sunshine a day during the summer. Most aquatic plants need this much sun in order to produce blooms and to grow well.

Your pond should have plants that live under the water (called “submergent vegetation”) as well as plants whose stems or leaves rise above the water.

Submergent plants increase the amount of oxygen in the water, which helps underwater-dwelling animals survive. Above-water plants shade the pond, which keeps the water temperature from rising too much. Very warm water becomes oxygen-deficient.

You can make a pond of your own design by trimming a liner made of a combination of polyethylene and rubber, or you can buy a pre-formed pond made of plastic or fiberglass. Whichever you choose, you will have to excavate an area deep enough and wide enough to accommodate the pond.

To be sure that the pond water does not completely freeze during the winter months, you should make the pond as deep as possible, and certainly no less than 18 inches in the deepest section if you live in Central Virginia. You can find out from an extension agent or the local soil conservation office how deeply the ground freezes in your area and use that as your guideline.

Before putting in your lining or pre-formed pond, make sure that the sides of the hole you have dug are free of sharp objects, such as rocks and tree roots. Place a layer of sand at the bottom to create a level surface.

The hardest part about putting in a pond is the labor involved in digging out the soil from the site. If you can’t do this yourself, you might want to pay someone else to do only the digging while you take care of the actual installation. If you don’t mind spending the money, you could hire a professional pond installer.

Before doing anything, however, you should do some research about installing and maintaining ponds. Many books are available on this subject.

How quickly you attract wildlife will depend upon where you live, but you may be surprised by how soon animals show up. Insects, such as water striders, will probably be the first to appear because of their mobility (they can fly), and with luck, frogs and salamanders will arrive soon thereafter.

Birds will flock to the pond to drink and perhaps to bathe, if the underwater plant growth forms a mat thick enough to support their weight. And mammals will, of course, come for a drink of water.

Your pond will be a little world unto itself and you can learn how it functions by being a keen and nonjudgmental observer of its inhabitants. If you haven’t already discovered how absolutely fascinating nature can be, you certainly will after you have put in a pond!

The Great Enemy of Truth is the Myth

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

[Excerpt from President John F. Kennedy’s Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962]

A serious problem for our natural world is the many misperceptions that people harbor about it and which they often refuse to discredit, even when given factual information disproving their unfounded beliefs.

For example, it’s not uncommon in spring to see in print or to hear people say that allergy sufferers are reacting to the pollen of the many noticeable blooms on flowers and trees in this season. Indeed, I read a newspaper column in May in which the writer suggested that “this year all those beautiful flowers and trees are bringing a very unwelcome side effect.”

But in reality, plants that make conspicuous flowers require animals to pollinate them because their pollen is too heavy to travel on the wind. Therefore any plants that are beautiful because they have showy flowers are not a source of misery for people who are allergic to pollen they’ve breathed in.

It’s understandable that people suffering an allergic reaction at a time when lots of plants are blooming would naturally think that these plants are the source of their problem. Thus the myth is certainly persuasive, which is why it persists despite the fact that it’s not based upon reality.

But once you understand why plants would have showy flowers in the first place (so animals will notice them, visit them, and end up carrying pollen away), you can believe that the pollen of such plants is physically moved from one flower to another by animals—not air currents—to aid in the reproduction of the species.

The problem with myths that are misperceptions of reality is that they can cause people to do things that make their own lives less enjoyable while creating life-threatening situations for other organisms.

For example, many people believe that goldenrods, with their conspicuous golden flowers, are a source of allergens because they bloom at the same time as ragweed, which has inconspicuous flowers.

Thus folks may remove goldenrods from their yards, which not only deprives them of a source of beauty during the fall, but which also deprives many kinds of insects of an excellent source of nectar and pollen at a time of year when most plants are going to seed.

One insect, the Monarch Butterfly, is especially dependent upon the late-blooming goldenrod. This plant’s nectar (a sugary fluid) provides carbohydrates, a rich source of energy vital to the survival of each Monarch as it migrates to Mexico in the fall.

To help our Monarchs on their journey, all of us should be planting goldenrods, or at least be allowing the ones that come in on their own (“volunteers”) to stay put.

Another common myth regarding the natural world is that people are normally stung by bees. From radio and TV to the Internet and print media, people talk about “bee” stings, when in reality, most people are stung by social wasps, such as the Eastern Yellowjacket (Vespula maculifrons) and the Bald-faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata).

As with all organisms, a bee wants to live as long as possible—something that isn’t going to happen if it stings someone.

When a bee stings a person, its stinger is torn from its body and left in the wound, causing the bee (unlike a wasp) to die. Therefore a bee will only use its stinger if it absolutely must, such as when it senses imminent danger to itself or its nest.

In fact, a bee wants you to know right where it so as to avoid a confrontation that might force it into using its stinger. That’s the reason that bees—unlike wasps—buzz!

My husband is allergic to stings and I remember how nervous he was our first spring and summer together. I grow lots and lots of flowers, which means lots and lots of bees, wasps, and other kinds of insects everywhere you look in my yard.

He told me how, as a little boy, he would “zoom” past the azaleas that were humming with bees because he was so afraid of getting stung. I explained to him that he hadn’t needed to be so fearful of these insects because bees and wasps mind their own business as they go about their activities at flowers.

I pointed out that the only reason anyone would ever get stung would be if they made the insect feel threatened by crowding it (leaving little room for it to fly away). Now, after having seen me take many, many close-up photos of bees and wasps at flowers without ever getting stung, my husband no longer fears these insects.

Additionally, you never want to approach a nest closely because these insects—with good reason—will feel the need to protect their young.

The explanation for why the majority of “bee” stings are actually wasp stings is because our buildings tend to provide great places (under the eaves, for example) for wasps to build their nests, which are often close enough to the ground to make these insects nervous when people (or any kind of animal) gets too close.

The main strategy my husband and I use to avoid getting stung by wasps is to make sure they aren’t able to reproduce right around our home. We actively look for their paper nests in early spring when there is only one queen and a very small nest to remove.

We locate nests and make a note of where they are. On the next chilly morning (50 degrees or less), we get outside early with a long stick to knock the nests down. This is fairly safe because wasps, being cold-blooded, are sluggish in the chilly temperatures so they fall to the ground.

If we discover a nest later in the season when morning temperatures are higher than 50 degrees, we’ll venture out in dark clothing and in total darkness to take down the nest by using a flashlight to blind the wasps to our movements. After knocking a nest down, we immediately leave the area and come back inside the house.

If a nest is just out of reach, we sometimes knock it down with a strong stream of water from a hose. We never use pesticides, which are totally unnecessary.

By sometime in May, the wasps have normally been discouraged enough to find a place away from the house to nest. Of course, they will still be in the vicinity to feed, and since they can land anywhere, we remain alert for their presence to make sure we don’t scare them into stinging us.

So don’t fear wasps and bees, but do respect them. By learning why they behave as they do, you can be smart about your own behavior and peacefully coexist with them.

Indeed, my once-fearful husband now finds our nature-friendly yard a marvelous place to be. I love watching him watching the bees and wasps as they visit the flowers as he stands right next to them.

A little knowledge makes all the difference in whether you view the world as terribly frightening or incredibly fascinating.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: The Great Enemy of Truth is the Myth

Common Sense Patrol

This Hallmark deco of Lucy van Pelt from the Charles Shultz comic strip “Peanuts” provides inspiration to the author! Photo credit: Marlene Condon.

My husband and I were in a card shop one day when I suddenly heard him exclaim, “Hey! That’s you!” When I looked at the shelf to see what he was grinning about, I saw Lucy van Pelt (from the Charles Shultz comic strip “Peanuts”) behind the wheel of an old-timey police car.

On the side of the car where it would normally say “Police” it instead said, “Common Sense Patrol.” Now Lucy is my writing companion, off to the right of my keyboard.

Common sense is most often defined as sound practical judgment based more upon one’s personal experience rather than specialized knowledge or training. However, very few people have faith in what their own eyes tell them or are confident in their ability to make decisions without the advice of, or confirmation by, one or more experts.

For example, you will read in gardening magazines that the feeding activity of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a woodpecker that makes shallow “wells” in the surface of tree bark to access sap, is deleterious to trees. But an astute observer can find many huge trees that are covered with ancient sap wells as well as more recently made ones.

Obviously the woodpeckers that have visited the trees through the years did no harm of any consequence; otherwise the trees could not have lived long enough to have gotten so big! Therefore common sense should tell anyone who pays attention to the natural world that this gardening lore is just plain wrong.

Yet when I point out the fallacy of these kinds of accusations against wildlife, people are often reluctant to employ critical thinking that would lead them to the truth. If they know someone with Ph.D. after his name who is a supporter of a supposed truth, they are going to put faith in that person’s purported credentials instead of in what reality tells them is true.

Consider an experience I had one autumn more than two decades ago. I visited a nature preserve every morning for a week or so to make notes about the plants and animals that could be found there. I’d been asked to write a nature column for the newsletter that was mailed out monthly, and I wanted to make sure I mentioned the appropriate organisms.

Many wildflowers were in the process of going to seed in the fields while other plants, such as goldenrod, were beginning to bloom—just in time to provide nectar that would be especially valuable to Monarch butterflies migrating south at that time of year.

The fields were absolutely bursting with life! A variety of insects visited plants for their final meals of the year while numerous species of birds poked about to feed upon seeds, insects, or both. Bees buzzed and birds chirped. It was exhilarating.

Then, within the course of just 24 hours, I returned to find the place quiet and lifeless. Every single field had been cut; every plant was lying on the ground. Virtually all of the activity that had been taking place just the day before had ceased.

The insects and the birds had been forced to move on to find other sources of nourishment and cover; the Monarchs would get no help from this nature preserve as they tried to get to Mexico.

I immediately expressed my dismay to the person in charge, providing her with the details of my observations. I explained why the fields should not be cut in the fall, but rather only in early spring so as to minimize the detrimental effects of mowing upon wildlife.

She listened intently, and I thought she understood how sensible my explanation was. But even though the course of action I was recommending for future management of the area was logical, common sense didn’t prevail.

When I next visited the area and talked to her, she told me she hated “to pull rank” on me, but she had asked her husband, a U.Va. biologist, what he thought. He had disagreed with me. He felt mowing would impact critters no matter when it was done, so the timing didn’t make one bit of difference.

I didn’t know what this man’s area of expertise was supposed to be (he had a Ph.D.), but I could tell that it was not wildlife land management. I was very surprised that he would voice his opinion when he obviously had neither personal experience with, nor personal knowledge of, the circumstances of this situation.

The professor was overlooking the fact that a fall cutting meant the plants, along with their seeds and any eggs laid upon them by invertebrates, would be prone to rotting as they lay upon the ground. If they’d been allowed to stand tall throughout the fall and winter, they would have been able to dry out by swaying in the wind following a rain or snow storm.

If the seeds and eggs rotted, plant and animal species would not be perpetuated, and wildlife trying to survive the coldest months of the year would not be fed. And, of course, with the plants on the ground, they couldn’t provide cover or shelter for wildlife during harsh weather.

In other words, cutting the fields in fall creates conditions that are problematic for wildlife, whereas cutting the fields in early spring—the best time to cut them—would follow the example of Mother Nature herself.

By springtime, dried plants are beginning to decay and fall over; animals have been fed and sheltered when they needed it most; and the seeds and eggs not discovered and consumed have a chance to start the cycle of life over again.

Although I find the idea of following Mother Nature’s example to be intuitive, my experience has been that people ignore common sense and instead try to fight this suggestion at every turn. It certainly doesn’t help when “experts,” who may not possess much knowledge about a situation, don’t hesitate to offer their opinion as seemingly sound advice anyway.

In truth, a Ph.D. following someone’s name does not automatically imply expert status with regards to any subject, no matter how distantly related to that person’s field of study. It’s simply proof that the person successfully mastered a particular topic.

Unfortunately, when people seen as reliable sources of information provide poor advice regarding our natural world, there can be seriously detrimental consequences for its welfare (and ultimately, for ours) as a result.

But no one needed a Ph.D. to understand the logic and common sense of managing the fields as I had explained. A little bit of analytical thinking about the deafening silence of the cut fields after they had been so full of life should have made obvious the correct course of action to follow.

So now you know why I always have to be on common sense patrol!

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Common Sense Patrol

Keep Your Leaves to Save Butterflies, Moths, and Many Other Critters

A Luna Moth (seen here resting on a wall of the author’s house) lives only to reproduce. It dies within a week of emerging from its cocoon. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)

October is the month in which we might be treated to a colorful show of leaves, courtesy of our deciduous trees. As chlorophyll breaks down and reveals a variety of hues (the result of sugars that were in the leaves all along, but masked by the green chlorophyll), these trees give us a spectacular display of natural art (as long as soil moisture and temperatures have been conducive to this outcome).

Yet, to most people, the minute those lovely leaves fall to the ground, they become litter to be bagged and hauled off the property, or worse yet, burned. These actions are disastrous for our wildlife and not at all helpful to the trees either.

Leaves are supposed to remain around the tree from which they came because they are, literally, nutrients that have been taken from the soil and transformed into leaves. After the leaves fall to the ground, they are supposed to be recycled back into the soil to nourish the tree’s future growth.

Nutrient recycling is accomplished by numerous kinds of critters that feed upon the leaves and break them down. The nutrients from the leaves are returned to the soil in the droppings of these animals. In other words, the leaves, along with the help of wildlife, constitute your natural—and absolutely free—fertilizer program.

Additionally, those leaves are your natural mulch that maintains soil moisture and moderates soil temperatures for the benefit of the tree’s roots. It’s wasteful of time, money, and effort to get rid of leaves only to replace them with some other kind of mulch from the store.

But most importantly of all, those fallen leaves become an incredibly important blanket for the benefit of numerous invertebrates out there (and even some vertebrates, such as our treefrogs) that require this covering to get through the winter.

For example, female fritillary butterflies (we have several species in our area) lay their eggs in late summer near violets (Viola spp.), the gorgeous host plants for their caterpillars that will hatch out shortly. But those tiny caterpillars will not feed this fall. They will take shelter in leaves and other plant debris to hibernate. When the violets resume growth in the spring, the caterpillars will start feeding and resume their own growth as well.

Thus if you want to create habitat for these attractive butterflies, it’s essential to provide leaf mulch as well as violets. And these aren’t the only butterfly species that absolutely depend upon leaves to perpetuate their kind.

The Red-banded Hairstreak, a small but attractive butterfly, does not lay its eggs upon its host plant, Winged Sumac (Rhus copallina). Instead the female attaches each tiny egg to the bottom side of a fallen leaf below the plant from which the leaf dropped. When the eggs hatch, the caterpillars feed upon the decaying leaves instead of fresh ones as most other caterpillars do! And if the caterpillar is from a late-summer brood, it will overwinter among that same leaf mulch.

The caterpillars of Tawny Emperors and Hackberry Emperors curl dried brown hackberry leaves (Celtis spp.). around themselves to overwinter. Some lepidopterists (scientists who study moths and butterflies) say they remain attached to the tree, but others report that they fall to the ground when the leaves fall off their host trees. If you run a lawn mower over the fallen leaves, or bag or burn them, you kill your caterpillars and thus your future butterflies.

And, of course, our moths—being closely related to butterflies—also require leaf mulch for some species. The familiar Woolly Bear caterpillar, the larva of the Isabella Tiger Moth, is spotted along roadways in September because it is searching for an area of sufficient leaf cover to hibernate under. When spring arrives, it will pupate (form a cocoon) and finally emerge in its adult stage.

Have you ever seen the gorgeous, pale-green Luna Moth? With a wingspan up to four and a half inches, it’s one of our largest moths and is the animated insect in TV commercials for the sleep aid named Lunesta. This beloved species even appeared on a first-class postage stamp (22 cents) back in 1987.

The caterpillar can feed upon the leaves of a variety of trees and shrubs, such as Black Walnut (Juglans nigra), Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), hickories (Carya spp.), Sweet Gum (Liquidambar straciflua), and sumacs (Rhus spp.). It has also been found less frequently upon Red Maple (Acer rubrum) and White Oak (Quercus alba).

When it’s fully grown at about two and a half inches, the caterpillar wraps itself in a leaf, entering the pupa stage. If this occurs as winter is approaching, the cocoon falls to the ground as the tree loses its leaves, where it’s sheltered in the leaf mulch.

Of course, butterflies and moths represent just a fraction of the many invertebrates that make use of leaf mulch. But as you can see from just the few species of butterflies and moths that I’ve written about here, keeping leaves under the trees from which they came is literally a matter of life and death for many species of wildlife.

The Luna Moth used to be considered common, but it is now feared that they are endangered in some areas due to habitat loss and other factors, such as lights left burning all night. Usually when we hear the term, “habitat loss,” we think only about plants disappearing. But in the case of the Luna Moth, the problem is not a loss of trees and shrubs, but rather the loss of leaves as people insist upon removing them from their yards.

Here are some tips on how you can be more nature friendly while simultaneously lessening your load of work in the fall:

• Don’t plant grass underneath trees. It doesn’t belong there; leaf mulch does.

• It’s best not to plant anything underneath trees because you shouldn’t be walking there a lot to tend to plants. Your weight compacts the soil, which is harmful to the tree’s roots. But if you feel driven to decorate the area, plant only shrubs that are meant to grow among fallen leaves and place them near the drip line.

• If the autumn weather is drier than usual and the leaves are being blown out from under the tree, retrieve some pruned tree and shrub branches from your brush pile (every yard should have at least one) and place them gently over the leaf area beneath the tree. They will help to keep the leaves in place.

When I see bags and bags of leaves lining city roadways to be picked up, I see mankind’s ignorance about the everyday impact humans have upon the natural world, which is accompanied by an appalling lack of concern about living in agreement with nature. I also see a world that has become—and every day is increasingly becoming—not only far less enchanting, but also far less capable of supporting us.

Charlottesville Stormwater Utility Fee Won’t Help Save the Bay

Condon-pic — Businesses, as well as homeowners, often maintain huge lawns that take an enormous toll on the environment—and ultimately humans. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Earlier this year, the Democrat-controlled Board of Supervisors of Fairfax County, with the help of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, successfully fought the EPA’s attempt to regulate storm water flow into Accotink Creek.

The EPA was trying to keep the creek from being drowned in sediment from storm water runoff. The board was trying to keep from using taxpayer dollars to adequately fix this problem that was totally caused by inappropriate development.

The sediment from Fairfax County storm water runoff does not just impair Accotink Creek. It affects the Potomac River, which the creek enters, and the Chesapeake Bay, which the Potomac flows into.

Therefore the county of Fairfax and the state of Virginia effectively ignored a moral duty to preserve a natural resource that has been historically one of the most productive estuaries on the planet—an economically important source of food and recreation (fishing, birding, boating) for all Virginians.

In Charlottesville, the Rivanna River feeds the James River, which flows to the Chesapeake Bay. Because of the huge amount of impervious surface area that people maintain on most properties, rainwater runs over the ground instead of soaking into it as would happen in natural landscapes.

The rainwater picks up pollutants, such as oil and grease from machinery as well as pesticides and fertilizers from yards, and is carried by ditches, drains, and pipes straight into local streams and rivers without the benefit of water treatment.

Thus virtually all of the pollution created in Charlottesville and picked up by rainwater ends up ultimately in the Bay. The EPA has been trying for years to get governments and citizens in the Bay watershed to voluntarily take steps to limit adverse effects upon the Bay.

People create the situations that result in storm water runoff, so they need to take responsibility for fixing them (unlike Fairfax, that shirked its duty). In Charlottesville, officials are giving the impression that they are taking steps to address the deleterious effects of runoff on the Bay by instituting a fee system, which Albemarle County may soon emulate.

The city will charge citizens for the amount of impervious surface area (such as rooftops, driveways, parking lots) on every developed property other than those built and maintained by government. The fee—referred to as the “rainwater tax” by some folks—is part of the city’s Water Resources Protection Program (WRPP).

The point of the WRPP is “to address Charlottesville’s storm water related challenges in a comprehensive and economically and environmentally sustainable manner.” Unfortunately, the main point of the fee is simply to raise money to resize or rehabilitate existing pipes to remove storm water from impervious areas more quickly.

This means polluted water will be moved to the Bay more quickly, which means the fee simply enables people to continue to harm it. As too often happens, local government officials are not attacking the root cause of a problem, but instead taking the most expensive route to accommodate the problem.

As with the decision to spend a lot of money to build a new dam at Ragged Mountain instead of getting people to continue to reduce their water usage, local government officials have decided to spend a lot of money for construction work instead of getting people to change their landscaping to minimize storm water runoff.

People can’t get rid of rooftops or perhaps even parking lots, but they can replace most of their impervious landscaping. If the City took the intelligent route, they would discourage the societal push for artificial landscapes that are overly manicured and sterile, lacking the life forms necessary to keep them functioning as the natural world is meant to do.

Right now, non-environmentally friendly landscapes are enabled by laws and regulations that forbid (city “weed” ordinances, suburban covenants) or discourage (county land-use regs) the nature-friendly landscaping that would not only make land in the Bay watershed permeable, but also perfectly functional without the use of pesticides and excessive amounts of fertilizer.

Consider that lawn and turf grass is now considered the largest crop grown in the Chesapeake Bay watershed—“more than 3.8 million acres covering a staggering 9.5 percent of the watershed’s total land area. Turf cover now exceeds total pasture cover (7.7%), hay/alfalfa acres (7.4%) and the acreage of row crops (9.2%—corn, soybean, wheat) grown in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.” (chesapeakestormwater.net/2009/06/the-grass-crop-of-the-chesapeake-bay-watershed/)

Farmers are used to getting blamed for causing many of the problems affecting the Bay, but finally some scientists are recognizing that non-farmers (i.e., homeowners) are just as guilty by their cultivation of a turf “crop.” As reported in the same paper:

About 19 million pounds of pesticide active ingredients are used each year (mostly herbicides to kill otherwise fine-looking “weeds”). These pesticides are reaching local streams and rivers. According to USGS monitoring data, one or more pesticides were detected in 99% of urban streams, and one out of every five samples exceeded water quality standards to protect aquatic life.

Our compacted lawns produce extra runoff to the Bay. Thus, if we truly want to save the Chesapeake Bay, we can no longer ignore the elephant in the room. We must face the reality that every person who maintains more than a minimum amount of lawn for relaxing—especially one that is a thick carpet of grass grown as a monoculture—is contributing to the continued impairment of the Bay.

It’s unbelievable that some government agencies, universities, and lawn care companies claim that lawns are “green.” Here are just some of the reasons that a lawn can never be considered environmentally friendly:

A lawn consists of one or more nonnative (i.e. invasive) grasses. To maintain the green color of the grass, a lawn tends to be over-watered and over-fertilized (a source of nutrient runoff).

People are told that a lawn should not contain “weeds” or insects, thus they apply poisonous herbicides and insecticides.

Continual mowing throughout the growing season is a huge source of air and water pollution from engine exhaust.

The continual mowing, week after week, year after year, compacts the soil (especially if it has a high clay content), thus making a lawn a prime source of storm water runoff.

If lawns were permeable (as the city of Charlottesville apparently believes since it plans to only charge a fee on hardscaped surfaces), lawn care companies would not need to sell aeration and dethatching services in an attempt to make lawns permeable for the benefit of the grass roots.

However, the degree to which a lawn care company can even make a lawn temporarily permeable is minimal. Manmade aeration consists of making holes just a few inches deep (as opposed to the depth of wildlife-performed aeration), leaving the compacted soil below that depth to act as a barrier preventing further penetration of water. Thus a lawn does little to hold back storm water runoff.

At its web site, the city boasts that the Stormwater Utility Ordinance is truly a partnership between local government personnel and leaders/partners within the community. It then immediately names numerous conservation-related organizations that support its fee system. This is exactly what Charlottesville and Albemarle County officials did to “sell” the need for the new Ragged Mountain Dam to area taxpayers.

It’s truly puzzling that the city, in concert with all of these conservation-minded groups, could have totally overlooked lawns as a serious contributor to the storm water problems facing this area as well as the Chesapeake Bay. It’s also deeply disturbing.

Charlottesville Stormwater Utility Fee Won’t Help Save the Bay (Part One: The Problem)

The Solution—Changing Minds, Changing Lawns, and Changing Landscape

Marlenes-rain-barrell — Collecting water at downspouts helps to keep water on a property, but the amount is miniscule compared to what a nature-friendly landscape retains. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

To address the deleterious effects of local runoff on the Chesapeake Bay, Charlottesville has instituted a fee system, which Albemarle County may soon emulate.

The City will charge citizens for the amount of impervious surface area on their developed properties. “Impervious surface area” is defined as “any surface coverings that do not absorb water, including roads, roofs, and parking lots.”

In other words, Charlottesville officials are making people pay for the impact of structures they require. Although you can and should limit the size of your dwelling, you do need a place to live. That means you probably also need a “road” (driveway) or a parking lot (if you live in an apartment) to access your dwelling, so you are being asked to pay a fee on necessities.

Because there is not much an individual can do to avoid needing these particular impervious surfaces, it does seem a bit immoral to assess a fee on them as if anyone has much choice. (The same is true for food—commodities such as meat, dairy, vegetables, and fruits—should never be taxed.)

However, because lawns are optional and highly detrimental in many ways to our environment in addition to contributing to storm water runoff, there would be absolutely nothing unjust about assessing a fee on the amount of lawn area on a property.

There is now a legitimate and compelling reason for government to encourage, via the power of taxation, the creation of more natural, and thus more environmentally friendly, landscapes that would not only make land in the Bay watershed more permeable, but also perfectly functional without the use of pesticides and excessive amounts of fertilizer.

What government should be doing is allowing a minimum square footage of lawn around the house and charging a fee for the amount of lawn area beyond that amount. The reality is that most lawns see little, if any, use and the only reason that most people have lawns is simply because it’s the accepted form of landscaping in our society.

A lawn could—and should—be replaced by whatever combination of flowers, wild grasses, vines, shrubs, and trees a landowner enjoys seeing. The idea that a lawn with a few plants here and there will function without problems is an idea born of ignorance.

There absolutely must be a variety of plants to support a variety of organisms because the critters are the ones that keep the environment functioning properly. For example, the animal activity that takes place in a nature-friendly garden is responsible for helping it to retain even heavy rain.

A natural area with large numbers of plants of different heights comprises a vast multilayered canopy that must have all surfaces dampened before a drop of rain even reaches the soil.

When a droplet does hit the ground, the soil will accept it because of the innumerable kinds of invertebrates living within the soil, aerating it with their activities. Additionally, most mammals either dig for food, tunnel through the soil, or make their homes underground, allowing water to enter the earth through the holes that they make.

Yet the unnatural landscape dominated by lawn that supports very little wildlife is favored by development covenants and city and county officials even though it is doomed to being problem-prone from the get-go. People, including government officials, must change their minds about what our immediate environment should look like. Abolishing “weed” ordinances and instituting a lawn tax would definitely be a start in the right direction.

When I’ve spoken with government officials about why they seem obsessed with limiting the height of grass and other plants in yards, the word “vermin” always comes up. Again, this is a display of the ignorance in society about our natural world. The word “vermin” is typically used as an excuse for people to kill particular animals that they fear or view as competitors, such as foxes, coyotes, rats, mice, and even hawks.

Right here in Albemarle County in the 1980s, hawks were shot and killed illegally as “vermin” on billionaire John Kluge’s estate. Coyotes are being killed nowadays with the approval of the Game Department, even though they offer a better way to keep deer populations in check than waiting for disease to take its toll (the means of last resort for Mother Nature when other population-control methods have failed).

It’s time for people to accept the fact that the consequence of eliminating predators is dealing with overpopulations of their prey. While government officials worry that mice and rats will be a problem if they allow citizens to create meadows around their homes, these animals are legendary for their abundance in big cities where there are no meadows—and few, if any, predators.

In Albemarle County, many suburban neighborhoods are governed by covenants that severely restrict the kind of landscaping that is allowed. People who live in these areas are going to have to decide whether they want to rescind the covenants so people can landscape in a more intelligent manner and not pay a tax, or whether they want to keep covenants in place and pay for the “privilege” of harming the Chesapeake Bay.

In the rural areas of Albemarle, supervisors must make a case to our state legislators to change laws to allow supervisors to give tax breaks to everyone who creates a nature-friendly landscape. Right now, only owners of large properties get huge breaks on real estate taxes—even though they aren’t usually doing a thing to help the environment or the Bay to be healthy!

People who grow grapes (please note that wine is not a necessity) pollute the landscape with pesticides throughout the growing season.

People who raise horses (again, not a necessity) tend to maintain a landscape that is every bit as manicured as a suburban lawn—and every bit as detrimental to our environment.

Some people own large tracts of open area that, if they can line up a farmer to cut hay, will get a tax break even though it would be far better for that land to be maintained in a natural state for the benefit of our wildlife.

We are losing numerous species of birds and other critters that need fields in which to reproduce—not a cut field that is, for all intents and purposes, just another, albeit larger, lawn. These animals have value, providing services that keep the environment in and beyond the field functioning properly.

It makes sense to give farmers a break on land assessments because they are feeding the rest of us. (However, even they should maintain some habitat for wildlife. Unfortunately, now days even farmers do away with natural areas.)

But what is the justification for allowing a break to owners of large tracts of forest? What is a 20-acre forest doing that a one-acre forest isn’t?

In point of fact, the one-acre forest protected from yet further development within an otherwise environmentally degraded subdivision is going to do far more to help that environment to function better than twenty contiguous acres elsewhere.

These regulations are not only senseless, they are also grossly discriminatory to most of the citizens in the county who pay far more in taxes on small pieces of property than do those who own much larger parcels.

The sad truth is that people refuse to recognize the true cost to our environment of maintaining unnatural landscapes. And, while well-intentioned, taxpayer-subsidized rain barrels and rain gardens are not sufficient to solve our problems.

What we need is an extreme makeover of our developed landscape. Otherwise, there can be no saving of the Chesapeake Bay.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Saving the Bay, Part Two: The Solution—Changing Minds, Changing Lawns, and Changing Landscape

The Importance of Conserving Natural “Infrastructure”

The Green Infrastructure Center in Charlottesville has released a book to guide community efforts to maintain the natural environment that humans are dependent upon for their survival. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

The Green Infrastructure Center in Charlottesville has released a book to guide community efforts to maintain the natural environment that humans are dependent upon for their survival. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.
The Green Infrastructure Center in Charlottesville has released a book to guide community efforts to maintain the natural environment that humans are dependent upon for their survival. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Generally speaking, people have become so removed from the natural world that they no longer realize that the environment constitutes our life-support system. Many folks think that it’s not at all important to conserve natural “infrastructure”—the forests, fields, waterways, soils, and wildlife—without which mankind cannot easily survive.

The evidence that people feel this way is all around us. In the recent past, Charlottesville City Councilors continued their historical disregard of the intentions of Paul Goodloe McIntire when he donated a large swath of land to the city in 1926 to use as a park.

The councilors voted that the eastern edge of Mr. McIntire’s eponymous park should be destroyed so that a parkway could replace parkland. On the western side of the park, they voted to eliminate yet more parkland by allowing a huge building to be placed there.

In Albemarle (as elsewhere throughout the country), the desire to bring in more and more money—supposedly to limit the tax burden on the residents even though this has been experientially proven to be a fallacy—blinds many citizens and their government representatives to the more precious value of natural infrastructure.

Thus the Shops at Stonefield replaced woods full of wildlife with immense hardscaping that neighboring businesses across route 29 fear will create runoff problems for them. (A lawsuit has been filed against the county, the city, and the developers regarding storm water management.)

Most people have trouble discerning the true value of the natural world around them because they look out the window and not much seems to be happening out there. Trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants do not change their appearance much from one day to the next. Birds are often the only form of life that is on the move and obvious to the casual observer.

Therefore it’s difficult for someone to grasp the significance of the natural world to his own existence. However, uncountable interactions are taking place in the environment that are essential to every human being’s existence.

All of those green plants are making available to us the oxygen that we cannot survive without. The roots of those plants are holding the soil in place so that it does not run off and smother organisms, their eggs, or their larvae that provide food and/or services to humans within our streams, rivers, and the Chesapeake Bay.

The soil itself functions to cleanse whatever harmful materials may get picked up by rainwater, such as agricultural and man-made pollutants that would degrade our waterways.

The plants we need for food and oxygen depend heavily upon innumerable organisms in order to grow and thrive. Recyclers (such as slugs and snails) and decomposers (such as bacteria and fungi) work on wastes and dead organisms to supply nutrients to the soil for the benefit of growing plants that will not be healthy without such assistance.

Pollinators (bees usually come to mind first for most people but there are actually many, many kinds of pollinators) help most flowering plants to reproduce so each species is perpetuated instead of going extinct.

Predators work to limit the numbers of other kinds of critters so that plant-eating animals don’t destroy the very plants they (as well as humans) depend upon for their survival. By limiting populations, predators are also making sure that the environment is not overwhelmed by wastes created as a result of life processes.

In other words, there is an incredible amount of activity taking place out there, even though most people are oblivious to it. The natural world is, in actuality, quite dynamic. Should it cease to work properly, humans will be in deep trouble.

We are steadily marching towards such a dysfunctional state as we eliminate organisms whose functions can be viewed like the cogs in a machine. Organisms may seem myriad in number and unimportant at the species level, but each species is essential to the most efficient and proper functioning of the environment as a whole.

Luckily for humans, the natural world does have a limited number of backup organisms that can take over the jobs of those organisms we continue to wipe out. However, the key word here is “limited.” Eventually, if we choose to continue down this ruinous path, the natural world will no longer be able to support us.

But we don’t need to follow the pathway born of ignorance. In Charlottesville, we have the Green Infrastructure Center whose mission is to assist communities to “restore, manage, and protect…the natural resources and working landscapes” that provide clean water and air, thus ensuring quality of life while recognizing that the local economy must be sustained as well.

These folks work to identify critical ecological systems within urban, suburban, and rural areas that should be conserved in order to maintain healthy human and wildlife communities. They employ an integrative approach to land-use planning that maximizes returns for both the ecology as well as the economy of an area.

The idea is for local governments to take into account the natural world when considering population-growth, tax projections, traditional infrastructure, and capital improvement costs. This way of doing things should have been obvious long ago, but better late than never!

If you are a land-use planner, a developer, a member of a community group interested in helping to preserve the proper functioning of our environment, or even just an individual who wants the knowledge to speak out accurately at government meetings, you can purchase a resource guide called Evaluating and Conserving Green Infrastructure across the Landscape: A Practitioner’s Guide by Karen Firehock (available at the Green Infrastructure Center by calling 434-244-0322 or by visiting www.gicnc.org/)

This book starts with the basics, providing an overview of the reasons for green infrastructure planning, including the history of the field and definitions to make things clear. It goes on to explain how to evaluate and prioritize natural assets, how to map them, and how to organize an initiative that takes into account the views of various stakeholders as well as experts.

The Green Infrastructure Center is a non-profit agency whose existence could not have come at a better time. I hope citizens and government officials alike will take advantage of this group’s expertise and assistance.

Yes, Virginia, You Can Coexist with the Northern Copperhead

COPHD-with-feather-080710 — This female copperhead may have thought she was completely hidden behind this feather! (Photo: Marlene A. Condon)

As an adult I’ve welcomed all wildlife to my yard wherever I’ve lived. But in 2006, shortly after my book, The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People, was published, I faced a challenge to my open-door policy.

A female Northern Copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix mokasen), a venomous snake, decided that she wanted to give birth underneath my carport! The ground had settled and fallen away from one corner of the concrete floor, creating an opening to a cave-like area. The female snake could be seen daily at that corner.

Copperheads are commonly considered to be much too dangerous to be allowed to live around people’s dwellings. Folks typically do not know much about these snakes, and their lack of knowledge, in combination with folklore, produces extreme fear of them.

Thus, understandably, my husband was concerned about having this snake in such close proximity to us. He didn’t want to kill the snake, but he thought we should “move it along” by covering up the entrance to what I had begun to call a den (the appropriate word for such a hidden retreat used by an animal).

However, I wasn’t keen on my husband’s idea. My knowledge of plant and animal life has been gained by decades of taking extensive notes, along with photo documentation, of my observations. I now had a golden opportunity to learn about Northern Copperheads!

I therefore suggested that we cover up most of the opening with a concrete block to see if that would discourage the snake, but leave enough of a space that the snake could continue to go inside if she still wished to do so. Luckily for me, the copperhead remained.

Her presence didn’t present much of a problem for us because the den was on the opposite side of the carport from the kitchen door. Thus we did not need to walk near the area occupied by the snake in order to enter or leave the carport.

Was it scary to know a venomous snake was hanging around so close to the entrance to our home? Definitely! But familiarity with the snake caused our fear of her to decrease and our fascination with her to increase.

What we’ve discovered over the past six years (one or more females have used the den during most of these years) is that copperheads are much more terrified of us than we need to be of them and that they are actually quite docile creatures that have no interest whatsoever in dealing with people.

Northern Copperheads can cause humans serious harm, but it’s highly unlikely if you follow three very logical and simple rules. I’ve lived in my current home for more than a quarter of a century and I’ve never come close to being bitten by one of these snakes.

First of all, one rarely sees a copperhead, even in a nature-friendly landscape. When you do, common sense should dictate that you leave it alone. Most people get bitten by snakes because they are either trying to kill the snake or to move it. Obviously a snake is going to try to protect itself under these circumstances.

Second, you need to pay attention to where you place your feet. Getting into the habit of watching where you step is a good idea even if you aren’t concerned about venomous snakes. There are lots of critters on the ground that you needn’t step on and injure or kill.

Third, you should never place your hands or feet into areas, such as among tall plants or a woodpile, where you can’t see what’s in there. There are quite a few animals that, out of fear as your foot or hand approaches them, can give you quite a sting or bite that may not be deadly but which, nonetheless, will hurt quite a bit.

Can children learn these rules? Absolutely, just as they learn never to cross the street without looking both ways first. In fact, statistics show that children are far more likely to be run over by their own parents in their own driveway than they are to be harmed by a snake.

They are also much more likely to be harmed by pets, such as dogs, cats, and horses, or even to be hit by lightning. Our fear of snakes is way out of proportion to the actual likelihood of harm from them.

By following the three aforementioned commonsense rules and by being observant, you can give copperheads the space they need to go about their business of helping to limit rodent numbers. We should—and we can—coexist with these animals.

And believe it or not, when there’s no Northern Copperhead coiled at the northeast corner of our carport, my husband and I actually miss having its company!

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Yes, Virginia, You Can Coexist with the Northern Copperhead

Night Lighting Is Harmful to Our Insects

naturalist-moths — Burn lights only when absolutely necessary to avoid harming our wildlife, ourselves, and the integrity of our environment. (Photo: Marlene Condon)

April, 2012

My writing day does not get started until I’ve had my breakfast and exercise, both of which occur very early in the morning. I love getting out onto the roadways when it’s still rather dark so I can hear the natural world awaken and watch the changing palette of colors as the sun rises into the eastern sky.

Because I’m out so early, I see the many houses that have bright lights burning needlessly overnight. Some homes have very bright lights by the front door or cellar entryway while others have them over the garage. In other yards, a lamp post or even a utility light pole illuminates the front yard.

I suppose folks burn these lights to feel safer, but studies have shown that bright lighting does not deter crime. If it did, no burglaries should occur in the daytime, but in fact, more than half of them do.

Burglars require light to see what they are doing so it’s far better if your home is dark outside at night. Then a burglar will need to use a flashlight, which will draw attention to him if someone is watching.

If you feel that you absolutely must have lighting to ease your mind, then it would be best to use motion sensor lighting that only comes on when movement is detected and that goes off within a set period of time. But it would be far better for folks—and our environment—if people instead invested in better locks and bolts.

The reason to avoid using electricity whenever possible is to limit mutilation of our world (think mountain-top removal for coal); to limit pollution of our air and waterways (caused by burning coal to create electricity); and even more importantly, to limit the killing of insects that help to keep the environment functioning properly.

Numerous kinds of insects are so strongly attracted to illumination that they will stay near it most or all of the night. These insects may circle a light until they become exhausted; by staying around the light, they neglect to mate or eat; and these insects become easy prey for their predators, creating an unfair advantage that can result in over-predation of the population.

The idea that insects are important to our own lives may seem rather abstract. People usually understand that we need some kinds of these six-legged creatures to pollinate plants in order to obtain seeds or fruits for consumption by humans. But folks often don’t realize that insects do much more than help to provide food for us.

Some kinds feed on decaying organic matter to recycle it ultimately back to the soil for the benefit of growing plants. Some species of insects feed upon other kinds of animals, such as spiders and even slugs and snails to limit their numbers to sustainable levels. And the insects themselves serve as a vital food source for many birds, bats, and small mammals.

Sadly, insects generally get a bad rap. Although some of these animals (such as mosquitoes, ticks, and roaches) can be bothersome or cause illness in some instances, insects should not be vilified as if they exist simply to harm mankind.

I could scream when I hear the press releases put out every month of the year by the National Pest Management Association, which are presented as “public service announcements.” The ads overstate the problems caused by a variety of critters, including mammals and birds in addition to insects and spiders. The most egregious aspect of all is that the association uses children to pitch their deceptively worded ads!

The reality is that man can—and must—coexist with a variety of critters, all of which play important roles in our environment.

For example, the larvae of mosquitoes feed the fish—which many folks like to catch— in our streams. Ticks are a food source for insectivorous birds and mammals (which find the ticks when grooming themselves) that people enjoy watching. And the bits of food you’ve dropped on the floor or counter are recycled much more quickly by roaches than by bacteria and fungi that would otherwise need to deal with it.

Once you understand your fellow inhabitants of the earth, you can figure out how to avoid problems with them: Wear a long-sleeved shirt and long pants when in mosquito-populated areas; wear shorts in tick country (you can more easily see and feel ticks crawling on your skin if it’s not covered up); and try not to leave food debris on the floors and counters to make your home inhospitable to roaches.

Knowledge greatly reduces fear of the unknown. When you understand the functions of various creatures in our world, you can be more tolerant of their activities. You can also control, at least somewhat, your interactions with them.

Night Lighting Is Harmful to Our Insects