Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants

Posted March 12, 2009 by Andrew

Brooklyn Botanic Garden publishes some great stuff, and Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants is a standout. Invasive species from foreign lands with no natural predators here continue to overwhelm our native flora and fauna, and this book is an illustrative, accessible reference of better plant options, good for homeowners and pros alike.

When I moved to Topsfield in the winter of 2007, I was itching for spring so I could see what was growing in my new backyard. Well, spring came, and with it came the invasive plants. I found bishop’s weed, European buckthorn, Japanese knotweed, dame’s rocket, Norway maple, burning bush, Japanese barberry. I found a few treasures, but not many, and they were greatly outnumbered by the interlopers.

2009 is the first year Norway maple, sycamore maple, a number of honeysuckles and (most notably) burning bush are no longer for sale in Massachusetts. Some folks won’t be happy about this, and I can relate. The first plant I came across when I opened the BBG book was one of my all-time favorites: butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii).

The first place BBG lists it as an invader is Massachusetts.

I was puzzled. I knew butterfly bush was invasive in the Pacific Northwest and the UK, but here? My beloved buddleias?

Turns out that while butterfly bush can be an aggressive reseeder, it isn’t listed by the Massachusetts Invasive Plant Advisory Group as invasive, likely invasive, or potentially invasive. This means it hasn’t escaped cultivation so much as to land itself on the Massachusetts Prohibited Plant List.

At any rate, I now know firsthand the flood of emotions over learning a favorite plant has been deemed an invasive: heartbreak that it has; irritation because seriously, the government is telling me what I can’t plant in my garden; guilt that my knee-jerk reaction is to prioritize a plant I love over our native ecosystems.

Granted, my butterfly bushes haven’t proven invasive, but to homeowners who love burning bush, for example: I feel your pain. To you I say we will work this out. Burning bush is beautiful, but there are others that are just as much so, if not more, that can do things burning bush never dreamed of. There’s serviceberry (top left), which has great spring flowers and a berry rumored to make an excellent pie. There’s Virginia sweetspire (middle), whose fall color is, in my opinion, even better than burning bush, and which also has an amazing floral display. And then there are blueberries (bottom). Blueberries! I ask you, what’s not to love about blueberries?

Let’s all have a cathartic sigh over the invasives we love and work on moving forward. I can help. Brooklyn Botanic Garden can help. Call us, and read the book.

Photos from MOBOT.

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A Natural History of Trees

Posted February 25, 2009 by Andrew

There are a lot of gardening books out there, and a lot of books on trees. I have a thing for books that are heavier on ideas and photos and lighter on prose, but when I stumbled onto Donald Culross Peattie’s classic A Natural History of Trees: Of Eastern and Central North America, I read it like a novel.

A Russian novel, actually… Weighing in at 606 pages, you’d better be interested in trees and natural history if you’re like me and can’t stand not to finish a book if you start it.

But oh, what writing about trees. And I quote:

The most magnificent display of color in all the kingdom of plants is the autumnal foliage of the trees of North America. Over them all, over the clear light of the Aspens and Mountain Ash, over the leaping flames of Sumac and the hell-fire flickerings of poison ivy, over the war-paint of many Oaks, rise the colors of one tree — the Sugar Maple — in the shout of a great army. Clearest yellow, richest crimson, tumultuous scarlet, or brilliant orange — the yellow pigments shining through the over-painting of the red — the foliage of the Sugar Maple at once outdoes and unifies the rest.

Rarely have I ever read prose about trees so inspired, with such veracity. And yet this is an intensely useful book. Not only does Peattie tell of the folklore of every tree in it, he describes the natural habitat and growing conditions of each, and in the same compulsively readable prose. If you’re not up for digesting it all in one sitting, it’s still a valuable reference.

Be sure to buy the original (pictured) and not the newer abridged version. Woodcut illustrations are also not to be missed.

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