Without access to “magnificent wildlife,” a British journalist writes, we are deprived and bored. I agree. But magnificence comes in many forms.
Pressed during a radio interview to describe the space outside my home, I stumbled around, searching for words that would be both accurate and appealing. I may have failed on the second count when I blurted out: “It’s half-feral.”
I haven’t even figured out what noun to assign to this land that my husband and I nurture. Yes, it’s our “property,” at least in the legal sense. And we do have “gardens” — of a sort. But these terms are inadequate for embodying the spirit of the place and our intentions. While we manage the inside of our home as a human nesting site, we don’t feel we have any more rights of ownership to the outdoors than do the rabbits and raccoons, the bees and the beetles, or the sassafras trees edging their way along the perimeters.
Though I didn’t think about it at the time, it probably wasn’t a coincidence that the title of the book I packed for a beach trip last week echoed the words I’d chosen: Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot. Published in the U.S. five years ago, the British journalist’s grand vision for bringing life back to large tracts of degraded land did indeed recall my efforts to regenerate even small spaces: “Rewilding, to me, is about resisting the urge to control nature and allowing it to find its own way. … The ecosystems that result are best described not as wilderness, but as self-willed: governed not by human management but by their own natural processes.”
Throughout the book, Monbiot argues convincingly that much of his homeland has been razed by sheep farming — and that the treeless landscapes people have come to think of as “natural” are anything but. He encourages letting the trees grow and letting wolves, lynx and other top predators go wild where feasible. His descriptions of failed attempts to artificially manage wildlife populations resonated, especially because I’d just been watching Atlantic ghost crabs skittering in and out of their sand burrows when I read this example: “When conservationists in Florida sought to protect sea turtles by culling the raccoons which eat their eggs, they found that it caused the opposite effect. More turtle eggs were lost, as the raccoons were no longer eating the ghost crabs which also preyed on them.”
Driving Monbiot’s initial urge to rewild significant patches of the earth was “ecological boredom,” he writes, or a sense that his greatest challenge had become how to properly load the dishwasher. And that’s where our sentiments parted ways, at least for a few pages. In searching for a wilder, rawer life, he braved dangerous waters to find rare fish and developed proposals for bringing back the charismatic megafauna who’d once roamed the Scottish Highlands. My own rewilding has come from something much closer and more passive. Like Monbiot, I believe in allowing nature to find its way and encouraging as many native plants as possible to grow wherever they want to. But I am just as thrilled by the sight of a milkweed tiger moth caterpillar as I am by a tiger. Watching a wolf spider mom carrying her babies on her back isn’t any less fascinating than seeing a wolf (or its modern suburban proxy, a coyote). When you have a native plant garden, ecological thrills can be found around every bend in the path, under any log or leaf.
Ecologist and old-growth forest activist Joan Maloof writes in Teaching the Trees, “If you set out to learn about what goes on in a forest you will never be bored.” We have no old growth here. But as the new growth comes in, as the seeds of the plants that were once here sprout again alongside the seeds of new plants I’ve added to help the land heal, I would add only this to Maloof’s statement: If you set out to grow a forest and then welcome those who appreciate your efforts, you have a lifetime of learning and enchantment ahead of you. What was once Rachel Carson’s silent spring, a no-birds land of mowing and pesticides and lawn, will evolve into what Monbiot calls a “raucous summer.” We’re only halfway into the high season now, and the plants and minifauna have already taught me more than any textbook or nature documentary or trip to a remote and wilder place ever could. These are just a few recent dispatches from our increasingly feral habitat:
Nature’s Disguises: Yucca Moth or Bogus Yucca Moth?
As darkness descends and the fireflies rise, we see tiny yucca moths flying frantically around their namesake flowers in late June. They spend their whole lives on the plant, mating on the blooms and then laying their eggs there. Females also pollinate the flower — in fact, they are the plants’ only pollinators. This way, they ensure that their babies will have enough to eat, since the caterpillars dine on yucca seeds after they hatch.
But there is a twist to this story. In seeking to remind myself of the scientific name of the yucca moths we have here in Maryland, I learned that there is also a non-pollinating kind, dubbed the “bogus yucca moth.” They are still yucca moths, sharing similar lineage and living around and feeding on yuccas, but they don’t pollinate the plants. Some references therefore refer to them as “cheaters”—similar to the way bees who take nectar without pollinating are sometimes called “nectar robbers.”
The yucca moth (Tegeticula yuccasella) and bogus yucca moth (Prodoxus decipiens) look exactly alike. When I posted to the Facebook group, Spiders and Insects of Maryland, I was told that it’s impossible to tell who’s who unless you dissect their genitals. Further complicating this story is that Tegeticula yuccasella is thought to be not one but at least 13 different species, a list that includes a couple of other “cheater” moths.
Since our yucca plants have spread on their own, we of course have the pollinating kind of yucca moth. But we may also have other kinds. It’s a mystery! One day I might catch them in the act of pollinating and at least narrow it down a bit. But this little adventure reminded me once again that the more you know about nature, the more you realize you don’t know — and the knowledge is always changing.
Unsolved Mysteries: Flies Don’t Pollinate Grass—or Do They?
When tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa) flowers in our habitat, syrphid flies come to feast. Also called flower flies and hoverflies, these tiny creatures are important pollinators of many plants, but are they pollinating this grass? That may be a complicated question. Grasses have been thought to be primarily wind-pollinated, but more of them than previously known may also be insect-pollinated — or at least helped along in the process when insects visit the flowers and ease the pollen dispersal.
For their part, syrphid fly females need pollen to make eggs, and grasses tend to have an abundant supply. Grasses can also feed bees as well as caterpillars, and they provide shelter and overwintering habitat for insects. Of course, birds obtain necessary resources too, eating the seeds and nesting among grasses. According to one Forest Service profile of tufted hairgrass, it’s even grazed frequently by bears.
Unless and until it’s chewed up by your neighborhood bear friends, tufted hairgrass shines in natural gardens. Here in central Maryland, it’s evergreen even in snow. It likes part-shade, and though it’s listed as preferring moist and wet areas, it seems to be quite adaptable; I have some near the driveway and road and some on a slight slope.
Tufted hairgrass is widespread, but to find out if it’s native to your area, check wildflower.org or bonap.org. And if you find the species’ range doesn’t extend to your state, not to worry: Every region has native grasses that can provide excellent habitat.
Chemical Cues: Flea Beetles and Bonesets Beckon Monarchs
Many people know that monarch caterpillars survive exclusively on milkweed. But did you know that adult male monarchs ingest substances from the leaves of entirely different plants to help them in times of love and war? I wasn’t aware of this until a few weeks ago, when I saw one busily working the leaves of boneset (Eupatorium serotinum). After a few minutes, a car drove by and disrupted him, so he flew up and around the nearby common milkweed, ultimately passing up those blooms to return to his boneset-related agenda.
With the help of Don Harvey, a specialist in botany and lepidoptera, I learned that the monarch was engaged in a behavior called “leaf-scratching,” which involves visiting withered plants to gather pyrrolizidine alkaloids, substances that assist in pheromone production and also add to the chemical defenses of both male and female butterflies in the Danainae subfamily. Butterflies scratch the leaves with their legs to release the substance (which is visible in the second half of the video). In at least one study, researchers found that the leaves scratched by butterflies already had holes made by flea beetles, and those holes became a cue that attracted the butterflies to the plant. After reading that, I looked back at my videos and found that, sure enough, a flea beetle was making his way around the edge of the leaf the monarch occupied.
In addition to gathering pyrrolizidine alkaloids from leaves, monarchs also find them in flower nectar of plants in the aster family. Perhaps this one was visiting leaves because the boneset and other aster-family plants weren’t blooming yet. Whatever the motivations behind his foraging choice, I’m glad I had plenty of menu items for him. This is yet another reason to focus not just on milkweed and not just on flowers—but on all the many and varied ways that animals might be using a diverse array of plants in our habitats. And maybe it will encourage gardeners to give those poor flea beetles a break; they may be eating our eggplants, but they’re also contributing to the survival of our favorite butterflies.
Mosquito Patrol: Damselflies and Dragonflies on the Job
Though our land borders woods that surround a small tributary of the Patapsco River, we rarely saw dragonflies or damselflies during our first decade here. Once a baking, mowed lawn and field, the surroundings used to be hot and bone-dry all summer. But after planting bareroot trees and shrubs and encouraging volunteer saplings and grasses to grow, we’ve watched many areas transform into environments that are almost like wetlands. Cooler and shadier, they invite woodland-loving species like ferns and enchanter’s nightshade, pickerel frogs and scarlet tanagers.
Each summer the dragonflies and damselflies also increase in number and kind, until this season there are so many that I rarely take a walk outside without one (or two or even three) zipping in front of me. They perch on leaves, flowers, and plant stalks left up from the previous season, surveying for prey in our suburban jungle.
As voracious consumers of mosquitoes, these insects provide important natural controls. But unfortunately this balance is easily disrupted in the face of pesticides. In a recently published study conducted on plantations in Costa Rica, researchers found that spraying had a double-whammy effect: The mosquitoes developed a resistance and proliferated, while their main predator, a damselfly species, remained vulnerable to the chemicals and vanished. We’ve never used pesticides in our habitat, relying instead on the natural predator-prey cycles to keep things in check.
More Predators and Prey: The Ladybug and the Aphids
The most well-known of those predator-prey relationships, of course, is that of ladybugs and aphids. Alarmist calls for action against aphids appear all over social media, especially when they’re on milkweed and seen as interlopers in monarch butterfly habitat. Some people spray for aphids or hose them away, then buy a box of mail-order ladybugs sourced through questionable means, only to watch them all fly away when there is nothing left for them to eat.
Isn’t it much easier to just leave the food that ladybugs and their larvae need most, thereby creating a permanent habitat where they’ll want to stick around? We never worry about aphids on any plants, milkweed or otherwise, because these beetles are always nearby to take care of business. When nurturing space for them, it’s important to also consider their overwintering habits. One fun tip I picked up at a talk by Sara Tangren at the University of Maryland: Plant Penstemon digitalis not just for bees and hummingbirds but also for the ladybugs, who will take shelter under the dense basal foliage during the cold season.
Baby Food: Virginia Creeper Vine for Moth Caterpillars
I’ve written and spoken about the many wild babies supported by Virginia creeper vine, which feeds caterpillars of moths and provides nesting sites for birds. But I’ve never actually watched a moth lay her eggs on one until I sat on the front steps with my coffee one morning and an eight-spotted forester flew in to show me how it’s done. She was so fast I couldn’t catch her in the act of ovipositing on video, but I did manage to get a short clip of her exploration of the leaves.
A wonderful vine for fences, Virginia creeper is also a beautiful groundcover and helpful in keeping English ivy at bay. Its berries are an important food source for many bird species in the fall and winter, as well as for squirrels, opossums, raccoons and other mammals. This summer, I’ve had the pleasure of watching a papa cardinal teach his fledglings to forage in the Virginia creeper outside my new office window; he gathers caterpillars from the vine and brings them down to the potted rubber trees below, where the kids grab them out of his beak, bring them to other pots, drop them, pick them up again and finally eat them.
Nature’s Decomposers: The American Carrion Beetle
When my husband saw this little guy fall into the pool, he fished him out to bring him to dry land. I hadn’t seen one in person before but remembered a recent Instagram post from Sam Perry, a mortician and green burial advocate who’d observed American carrion beetles on a dead bird. These beetles consume fungi, fly larvae and deceased animals; they also lay their eggs in dead flesh, where larvae hatch and eat too. While it may sound unseemly to some people, we should all be thankful to these insects. Without animal and plant decomposers like carrion beetles, flies, vultures, opossums, slugs and snails, we’d be overwhelmed by rotting carcasses.
The Joy of a Mystery Plant — for Both Me and the Bees!
When it first popped up this year, I was delighted by the presence of this mystery plant, then suspicious of its intentions, and then delighted once again as syrphid flies and diminutive native bees started darting around its flowers. Tall and rangy, with leaves that looked nettle-ish but weren’t quite nettle, it had sprouted here and there, singly and unobtrusively. But it grew so fast so quickly that I had to wonder: Is it an invasive that will displace natives and harm the habitat here?
Unable to find the plant in my books and favorite websites, I waited until the long flower spikes stretched out and bloomed to see if they might provide more clues. And as so often happens, I learned the identity quite by accident, after coming across a blog that featured the plant among many other species. It’s a native annual called white vervain, or Verbena urticifolia, and it will always have a place at our buffet table for wildlife.
A Rock Makes a Perfect Bed … for a Butterfly
Waking up to the dawn chorus of a golden Sunday morning, a pearl crescent butterfly slowly dried the dew off his wings. I first saw him when I was cleaning the birdbaths; he appeared to have taken shelter on the side of a mossy rock I’d placed in the center of one of the baths for perching and basking. It was early and still cool, and he wasn’t moving at all, so I abandoned the task and came back later to find him more awake on top of the rock, leisurely shaking off the night.
About the size of my thumbnail, these beauties are abundant in our habitat because we have so many asters, which is the type of plant that pearl crescent caterpillars have evolved to eat. Growing throughout the property are smooth asters, aromatic asters, frost asters, heath asters and New England asters. These plants also feed many butterflies in the fall, and some native bees rely on the pollen of asters to provision their nests for their young.
Quite a few of our asters have volunteered on their own here. If you take the time to identify what’s coming up in your landscape and nurture the natives brought in by wind, in animal droppings, or on the wings and feet and fur of wildlife, you’ll start to see more and more little creatures like this one. You may also be amazed to discover who uses every inch of habitat: Who knew a birdbath rock could provide such cozy sleeping quarters for a butterfly? It’s just one of the many lessons learned in our half-feral garden.
Photos and videos (except in Sam Perry’s Instagram post): Nancy Lawson. Special thanks to the many friends, online and off, whose advice and work have helped me learn more about the ecology of our garden. In addition to the individuals mentioned, another helpful source includes Heather Holm’s Facebook page, Pollinators on Native Plants: A Group for Sharing Observations and Photos (which is where I connected with Don Harvey, who explained monarch leaf-scratching behavior to me).