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On
Saturday, the local land conservation group Grand Prairie Friends will conduct
a sale of native prairie and woodland plants at Lincoln Square in Urbana. This sale
represents the best opportunity of the year for residents of east central
Illinois to get their hands on a wide assortment of native plants at very
reasonable prices—and to support broader conservation efforts at the same time.
The sale starts at 8:00 Saturday morning and runs until noon.
At last
year’s sale, patrons were crazy for milkweed and nearly 1,400 milkweed
seedlings were sold. Why all the milkweed?
It’s the only genus of plants on which the caterpillars of monarch
butterflies feed and develop. Knowing that monarch populations are in trouble,
people here and across the country are doing what they can to create monarch
havens in their own back yards.
In this, I
sense an opportunity.
That’s
because I think people who are willing to plant milkweed for monarchs might
also be persuaded to favor wildlife more generally as they decide what to plant
in their yards. That is, they might also be persuaded to plant native shrubs,
such as New Jersey tea (Ceanothus americanus) or buttonbush (Cephalanthus
occidentalis), instead of alien butterfly bushes, and to plant native oak and
crabapple trees rather than their exotic cousins.
Unlike
conservation efforts that take time to mature, landscaping with native plants
can provide short-term gratification. (I found the first monarch caterpillar on
the orange butterfly milkweed I planted last year after only eight weeks.) In
addition, landscaping with native plants produces enduring good. My milkweed
will come up again year after year and support generation after generation of
monarchs, all with little or no effort on my part.
The impact
of planting native shrubs and trees can be even greater.
Consider a white oak
tree planted in the right place. After keeping it watered for the first year or
two, the person who plants it can walk away with some confidence the tree will
outlive her, and perhaps her children. Over that time, the white oak will
support the caterpillars of as many as 500 species of moths and butterflies,
which, in turn, will serve as food for dozens of species of birds. Among those
will be warblers, the tiny, quick, colorful favorites of birders. The warblers
we see in east central Illinois, winter in Central and South America and then migrate
to or through the Midwest in spring, and they depend entirely on insects for
food.
My understanding
of the importance of landscaping with native plants comes from Douglas Tallamy,
currently professor and chair of the department of entomology and wildlife
ecology at the University of Delaware at Newark. In the book, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain
Wildlife with Native Plants, he explains that we’re mistaken to think we can
support healthy wildlife populations by means of the relatively small amounts
of public land set aside for that purpose.
“As far as our wildlife is concerned,” he writes, “we have shrunk the continental United States to 1/20th its original size.” A straightforward ecological calculation tells us that little fragment will support only 5% of the species that were found here when Europeans first arrived.
Thus it is not just helpful but necessary to begin remaking our urban and suburban landscapes with native plants if we hope to slow current trends toward extinction in wildlife.
“As far as our wildlife is concerned,” he writes, “we have shrunk the continental United States to 1/20th its original size.” A straightforward ecological calculation tells us that little fragment will support only 5% of the species that were found here when Europeans first arrived.
Thus it is not just helpful but necessary to begin remaking our urban and suburban landscapes with native plants if we hope to slow current trends toward extinction in wildlife.
Print resources
Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants by Douglas W. Tallamy, Timber Press.
“Native Plants
in the Home Landscape for the Upper Midwest.” Keith Gerard Nowakowski.
University of Illinois Extension.
Some further sources for native plants
Possibility
Place Nursery
Prairie
Moon Nursery
Midwest
Agriculture and Restoration Services
They will
be selling a selection of prairie plants at the Tuesday farmer’s market in
Champaign beginning on May 12.
