How We Can

augment, advance, bolster, broaden, build, deepen, develop, enhance, fortify,

grow, heighten, improve, increase, invigorate, magnify, multiply, nourish,

promote, reinforce, restore, support, sustain, uphold and vitalize

Biodiversity in Chatham County

Bill and I moved to Chatham County to start a nursery growing native plants for the restoration trade.  In the early 1990’s there were almost no nurseries growing native plants in North Carolina.  Do you find that as odd as I do?  You could get plants from China, Japan, Europe, or South America, but not plants that evolved and flourish here in Piedmont North Carolina!!  And engineering companies trying to get materials for restoration contracts were going to Florida to get their plants!  So we moved to Chatham County, put up a deer fence, and started growing for regional projects requiring native plants.

Cure Nursery does not grow cultivars, but only plants from seeds – if possible from seeds we collect.  This is so we can “sell” the genetic diversity of our material, in contrast to the vegetatively-propagated clonal plants which the named cultivars found in garden centers are.  Plants of a single cultivar – even if native — are all genetically identical to each other (by definition), and since the stability of a biological system is directly related to the genetic diversity present in the system, it is far better if the plants installed in a restoration project are seedlings, with each plant representing a different mix of genes.  Then the population has a greater flexibility to respond to a stress of some kind, and it’s not locked into a narrow behavior pattern.

Well, eventually, we got a little smarter and planted some of these plants around our place so we wouldn’t have to travel quite so much to collect seeds each fall, which, after all, is our selling season!  We observed the presence of many, many butterflies, moths, dragonflies, birds, lizards, snakes, turtles, etc. but thought this was just normal for living in “the country”.  And even though Bill and I, real plant nerds, have spent so much time in “the boonies” locating reliable seed sources for native plant production, and encountering “wildlife” there, even we really didn’t GET IT about the key role that native plants play in sustaining the diversity of organisms in our ecosystem.

A couple of things changed that.  For one, our neighbor, Mike Dunn, who works for the Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh, started coming over to the nursery looking for critters.  He wasn’t the only one, but he was consistently reminding us that our plants were supporting larval stages of lots of butterflies, moths, etc.  He invited us to come sell our plants at BugFest, an annual event at the capitol in Raleigh attended by many thousands of kids of all ages honoring bugs! The astonishing enthusiasm for real critters (actually collected and displayed by the stalwart Museum staff in the booth next to ours) at BugFest raised our awareness and appreciation to a whole new level.  Now when I see bug damage on some of our plants, I actually am gratified we are being of service.

The second consciousness-raising event was when we came across the book called “Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants” written by Doug Tallamy, an entomologist.   The native plants aren’t merely beautiful – they are the essential ingredient if you want to see the butterflies and birds and amphibians and reptiles and small mammals which used to own the earth.

It turns out that native herbivore fauna (bugs to us), which evolved with the native plants over the millennia, cannot reproduce nearly as well if presented with a diet of plants from other parts of the world, with which they do not share an evolutionary history.  And if the bugs decline, all the rest decline!  Flowers of exotic ornamental plants may serve as nectar sources for adult butterflies, for instance, but unless it has evolved with a plant species, that butterfly is not likely to possess the adaptations required for using it as nutritional host.  That is, the butterfly cannot reproduce.

A good example of this is Butterfly Bush (Buddleia), a popular and beautiful-to-look-at exotic plant often offered for those wanting a butterfly garden.  Butterfly Bush does provide nectar for adult butterflies, but ironically, not one species of butterfly in North America can use Buddleia as larval host plants!  This is just one example (Dr. Tallamy’s book is rife with examples).  Since “alien” ornamental plants are what are grown almost exclusively in our seemingly limitless suburbs, is it any wonder that there is a biological sterility issue in these suburbs?  It is sort of sad that the kids have to get their parents to take them to downtown Raleigh to see these creatures!  Butterflies reproduce on a range of native plants which are equally beautiful to look at, but not fashionable in the nursery trade, which likes to attract customers with the word “New”.   This word is very powerful, but hard to apply to our dear old natives which were here before the European settler!

When we understand the critical relationship between native plants and the herbivore bugs as links in the chain supporting all of our wildlife, a new appreciation of the tragedy of our deer situation also occurs.  Mike Dunn is coming over to the nursery to find bugs because there are so very few native plants left in the understory of the woods we share just outside our deer fences.   You can count on one hand the native species deer won’t eat.   Almost all the “green” seen by the casual observer driving down our road is in fact the invasive exotic Silverberry (Elaeagnus umbellata), which deer will not eat.  For our neighbors who have eradicated the Silverberry on their property there is not much at all growing under the tall tree canopy.  In our development, where hunting has not been allowed for over 15 years, it has become a dire situation, as the oaks and hickories and tulip trees and redbud trees and dogwoods and maples and green ashes and persimmons and black gums and birches and walnuts are routinely nibbled down and are simply not present as seedlings, not to mention the dozens and dozens of beautiful shrub species which would feed birds, and innumerable perennial flowers!  (Many were still here when we moved here, but alas, no more.)  The problem is less severe elsewhere in Chatham County, but the pattern is similar.  If we do not change the trajectory of these trends by controlling the deer population, the future of our forest is deeply threatened.

Dr. Tallamy’s answer is that we must become educated about our ecosystem, find out who the important players are, and plant them.  We can all do this, if we have a bit of yard –and if deer are present, a bit of fence to exclude them.  We should beat the drums with our dollars at garden centers, demanding that they carry native plants for us.  They are fascinating and beautiful, equally if not more hardy, and key to abundant life in the Piedmont.

(Dr. Tallamy will be giving a FREE lecture at 2:00 pm on Sunday, October 11 at the brand new super-green educational center at the NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill.  There will be book signing, and there are always native plants on sale at the Garden.  He’s a great speaker.  Call for reserved seating 962-0522.)