Saddleback caterpillar (Acharia stimulea) Photo by Photo by Clemson University - USDA Cooperative Extension Slide Series

Let Them Eat Leaves

(Editor’s note: The following is from a National Public Radio story by Ketzel Levine that aired November 21, 2007.)

The local "organigrocery" was stuffed this day before Thanksgiving, people cramming their baskets as if preparing for a famine. And every one of us was blissfully distracted from the true famine in our own backyards.

What's starving? Wildlife. Are you growing native oaks and cherries for your saddleback capterpillars? Black-eyed Susans for your pearl crescent butterflies? What about white, yellow, or lodgepole pine for your imperial moths?

"Plants," writes Douglas W. Tallamy in his spanking new book, Bringing Nature Home, "are the fundamental source of energy for all terrestrial creatures". And note this: "Insects transfer the most energy from plants to animals".

The punchline? If you want to sustain native wildlife -- whether butterflies, birds or mammals -- you best be making room for more native plants.

OK, so it's not exactly breaking news. But if you've always thought planting natives was simply p.c., "a peripheral option favored by vegetarians and erstwhile hippies," (hey, I resemble that remark), the honeymoon's over. The stakes are the biodiversity of the world.

As a gardener, I'm the first to admit it's not always easy to work with the color of Rudbeckia, black-eyed Susan. But it may become an increasingly compelling option, since its flowers provide nectar and its leaves sustenance for this pearl crescent, Phyciodes tharos, as well as dozens of other butterfly species.

Many of us tend to think that the problem with non-native plants is that they may become invasive. And of course some do. But Tallamy gentles us into a different awareness.

It seems that many American herbivores -- e.g., caterpillars, katydids and beetles -- simply cannot eat the exotic plants we adore. Hence, the famine: starve the bugs, starve the birds, starve the predators (and I ain't talking about cats).

Polyphemus moth, (Antheraea polyphemus)

If you see this moth, you're doing something right, according to the author of Bringing Nature Home. It's the polyphemus moth, a.k.a. (Antheraea polyphemus), "wonderful evidence of backyard diversity".

Here's a brief excerpt from this very readable and morally even-handed book:

The predictions of mass extinction (note: he's speaking of all our wildlife) are based on the assumption that the vast majority of plants and animals cannot coexist with humans in the same place at the same time. Nonsense! Evidence suggests that the opposite is true: most species could live quite nicely with humans if their most basic ecological needs were met.

I found this passage particularly compelling as an argument against my own kind of shape and leaf-centric garden:

For the past century we have created our gardens with one thing in mind: aesthetics. We have selected plants for landscaping based only on their beauty and their fit within our artistic designs. Yet if we designed our buildings the way we design our gardens, with only aesthetics in mind, they would fall down. Just as buildings need support structures...to hold the graceful arches and beautiful lines of fine architecture in place, our gardens need native plants to support a diverse and balanced food web essential to all sustainable ecosystems.

Enjoying a meal of black cherry, Acharia stimulea, the saddleback caterpillar, has stiff spines with potent poison glands. According to author Tallamy, "one only knowingly touches a saddleback caterpillar once". Still, it'd be worth seeing one, if all it really took was the right tree.

I've no doubt many of you have been gardening with natives for decades, but I would love to hear from folks who are creating change/seeing change in unexpected places.