Virginia creeper(Parthenocissus quinquefolia) on a shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata), right a highly invasiveJapanese knotweed(Fallopia japonica) that grows, apparently still undiscovered, at least since spring and should be urgently removed because once established, you can hardly get rid of it and he overgrow everything.
Since I posted the anti-lawn memes, I’ve been reading lots of responses in the notes and thinking about something recurring in them:
letting your yard “go wild” or just not maintaining an area= automatically good
Leaving an area entirely unmaintained is probably better than putting pesticides and herbicides on a monoculture of grass. However, an unmaintained field of grass in most areas still has a big problem:
invasive plants
The people who say in the notes that they’re letting their grass grow wild are all mentioning mostly the same list of weeds and flowers that grow in its place:
white clover
deadnettle
dandelions
dog violets…
The sameness is a red flag in itself. Wild plants are incredibly diverse. There are probably hundreds of species in your area.
But also, those plants in the list are native to Europe. Which means they have the potential to be invasive elsewhere.
Non native does not mean universally bad, of course. Clover feeds bees and pollinators and it puts nitrogen back into the dirt. A lawn mixed with clover is better than a lawn that’s just grass. Dandelions will also feed pollinators and they prefer areas that are extremely hostile to most plant life. They don’t devour whole areas and choke out other plants in my experience, they’re just tough as hell. And they’re edible for humans.
But the first plants that grow up after you stop maintaining an area are often invasive. They’re specialized to take over disturbed areas faster than the others, and they’re the tough motherfuckers that can survive being mowed over while native plants often can’t.
That means it’s important to
selectively weed to give the other plants a chance
This is the tier above “stop mowing the grass,” it’s helping the area along a little in healing itself. I have been doing this to my own patch of ground all spring and have learned the following:
You don’t actually have to plant new stuff to get a greater variety of plants. There are lots of seeds and sprouts already there…
…underneath the mat of invasive plants
Justthinning out the invasives helps. In our back yard, I ripped up most of a thick mat of wintercreeper that was choking out all but a couple canes of blackberry bushes. And not only did the blackberries start to flourish, but other stuff started to spring up. Plants that had already been there, but had been starving in the darkness underneath the invasive vines.
After that I started weeding out anything that seemed to be taking over too much. It allowed the slower-growing plants to catch up.
I’m not an expert and this isn’t super scientific, but this is what I’ve figured out.
Basically, a place that used to be a lawn will probably be taken over by invasive plants first…because invasives take over quick and they smother and choke other plants. It’s what they do.
So to get a lot of variety, you’ve got to rip up and cut back some of those fast-growing nasties so the more patient guys can catch up.
here’s my controversial plant opinions of the day:
your garden can be both native and non-native plants. Its fine. It is not evil to plant non-native plants. Avoid invasives and noxious weeds but many non-native plants are good and fun
not all nativars are the Worst Ever or completely useless for pollinators the way many people claim BUT they do lower genetic diversity if cloned and not seed bred. This is more an issue if you are trying to reestablish a wild area or preserve a species, less so if you are landscaping your suburban house
Not all non native plants growing wild need to be eradicated or are horribly invasive, especially if they are growing in disturbed areas that we created. Hesperis matronalis for example grows places like roadsides, train tracks, and areas where invasives have already choked out natives.
Invasive plants are a symptom of a problem, not a problem themselves. They are not evil. It does not do any good to assign moral worth to plants. Native plants are not “good”. Invasive plants are not “the enemy” They just are. They are filling a niche that our society left open for them.
If you are going to remove invasive plants en masse, you have to have a plan for whats going in its place. Garlic mustard, for example, tends to build up in population and then decline in number… unless the population is disturbed in which case it starts back up again.
Given that climate change is a thing and the fact that we have changed the environment on a micro level by putting in dams and streets and neighborhoods with lawns and shopping centers…. most definitions of native plants are bogus. The idea that traditonal native plants are better adapted to our local environment is no longer true. The winters are getting colder, watersheds are changing all the time, and your new development with all the topsoil shaved off in the baking sun with so much deer pressure even deer resistant plants don’t stand a chance… the native plants are not native to that environment.
Oh, the problem is capitalism btw. Our infrastructure and livelihoods depend on creating environments where invasives thrive and natives cannot.
Individuals can help on a very small scale by planting their yards in an environmentally friendly way but if a highway project and new industrial center is going in down the street… nothing is going to help the local environment except lobbying and supporting conservation organizations
because this is 100% what I think about all the time in regard to militarized language around invasive plants and purity language around native ones and generally moralizing ecology into attitudes that idealize nature’s purity and inform other kinds of xenophobia and black and white thinking … all while largely ignoring indigenous issues, land back efforts, environmental racism, etc.
I’m regards to restoration efforts within North America, the “target” output is often restoring disturbed land back to “pre-European settlement.” And why is it such a big deal that invasives are removed? To answer this question we need to know what it means to be invasive. There’s going to be a few different answers but simply an invasive plant is something that can quickly take over an area and crowd out other species (whether it’s native or not). I’m not sure where this notion of “purity” is coming from, I haven’t seen that, but if that’s true that’s just wrong. There are some natives which are invasive themselves and need managing. Big bluestem grass and sumac are two examples of plants which are native to regions of N. America and can be invasive.
The common idea among those who are interested in restoration and reclamation (and who truly know how things work at an ecological standpoint), is that us humans need to be “stewards of the land,” and by managing systems like prairies, forests, marshes, etc. we can ameliorate the environment that we’ve so disturbed and destroyed. To do this, invasive species management is probably near the top of the list. The reason why is because most non-natives don’t support the animals and insects which live in whatever region they’re introduced, like honeysuckle for example. I’ve heard that birds can eat their fruits but I’m not sure if that’s true exactly because for most other animals (including us), their berries are poisonous. Plants like milkweed or even oaks cannot compete against the agressive nature of plants like honeysuckle.
I also will say I’ve seen a few times now where people who don’t really know anything about ecology or succession are making the calls on how to handle sites and it’s just causing so many issues. As noted above, if you’re planning on removing invasives that are pretty widespread through an area, you will need to have a plan for what’s to come next. Either seed in good supporting plants (clover for example), or beneficial natives or SOMETHING please because all that work that was done to remove those invasives will be for nothing. They’ll just come right back the next year and you’ll have to do it all over again. Not to mention, a major rain event will create such bad erosion that you’ll be paying for heavy damages and it’ll make it harder for other species to establish.
TL;DR when removing invasives have a plan for after and understand how the site will change! You’re creating disturbance and need to understand how that will change the system you are working in. You also need to understand this system for establishing plants or managing the site. There’s a lot more going on in this work besides “removing invasive plants.” Use seeds, plugs, etc to establish vegetation to keep invasives out. Also try and learn how these plant species interact with the environment around them.
This is good info and insight for folks into invasive species/native plant restoration work!
I want to clarify that my original post was in response to home gardening plant groups (like facebook groups) and attitudes among individual amateur native plant activists, not ecology professionals.
The “purity” aspect i see usually comes from misunderstanding what an invasive plant is and how restoration and conservation works.
