Native plants beautiful, serve a purpose
Native Ohio plants such as Bee Balm can make the grounds around the house look better, and they also can serve a bigger purpose, like feeding insects.
They've been here for a long, long time, and now native plants are just as important to ecology as ever.
According to Richard Gardner, chief botanist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, there are 1,842 native plants in Ohio.
These native trees, shrubs, perennials, vines and grasses are important to pollinators, birds, insects and all wildlife.
That includes humans: Native plants are part of nature's network that helps to filter and clean the water we drink and the air we breathe, keep the planet cool, and feed the bees that pollinate most of our food crops. In fact native plants are at the very core of the system.
So while using plants such as Purple Coneflower, Bee Balm or Blue False Indigo to make the grounds around the house look better, they also can serve a bigger purpose.
"Native plants were originally promoted for use in landscaping because they were beautiful, easy to grow and adapted to local weather conditions," said Lynda Price, senior naturalist at The Wilderness Center in Wilmot.
But Price said a recent study found a direct link between the use of non-native plants in yards and the decline of a common resident bird species, the Carolina chickadee. Non-native plants can break a key link in the food chain.
"Many insects do not eat non-native plants," Price said, "and those insects, particularly caterpillars, are food for baby birds. Native plants support a large variety of insects and serve as the link that takes the energy plants have harnessed from the sun to, in turn, provide food for other wildlife. Bees generally prefer native plants to non-native plants when they are gathering pollen and nectar. Butterflies like the monarch can only raise their caterpillars on a specific species of native plants: milkweeds."
Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware, said nearly 96 percent of our terrestrial bird species raise their young on insects, not seed.
"And birds need a lot of insects," Tallamy said. "It takes more than 4,800 caterpillars to raise one brood of chickadees. Native plants are often far more beneficial to native insects since they have had thousands of years to co-adapt, allowing native insects to tolerate the unique chemical defenses of native plants. Today our landscapes contain plants collected from around the world, but many of our insects have not evolved quickly enough to be able to eat these strange and exotic foods."
April is Ohio Native Plant Month — 2020 is the first after legislation was enacted last July — and one of ONPM's initial initiatives is to plant 100,000 trees in Ohio this year. That's part of the United Nations' goal to plant 1.2 trillion trees worldwide.
Some of Ohio's native trees are beech, sycamore, magnolia, black cherry, black walnut, the Eastern Arborvitae — which according to ODNR botanist Gardner, is the state's oldest living tree — hemlock, dogwood, buckeye, paw paw, sassafras, sugar maple, persimmon, red elm, white pine and yellow birch.
The Wilderness Center holds a native plant sale each April to promote the use of native plants in order to benefit wildlife, although with it being closed until April 15 at least, the status of the April 25-26 sale is uncertain. Go to www.wildernesscenter.org for updated info, as well as for the many native plants that can be included in yards and gardens to help birds, bees and butterflies.
Selections for natives for sun to part-sun include Marsh Marigold, Sweet Joe Pye Weed, Dogtooth Daisy/Sneezeweed, Rough Blazing Star, Marsh (Dense) Blazing Star, Great Blue Lobelia, Spotted Bee Balm, Claire Grace, Foxglove Beardtongue, Brown-Eyed Susan, Royal Catchfly, Iron Weed and Big Indian Grass.
Selections for natives for shade to part-shade include Goatsbeard, Heart-leaved Aster, White Wood Aster, Tall Bellflower, Tall Blue Larkspur, Mistflower, Sensitive Fern, Round-leaf Ragwort and Large-flowered Bellwort.
Ohio gardeners interested in adding native plants to their gardens and learning more about these plants can go to www.ohionativeplantmonth.org. On the site you can find a list of 231 native plants found in Ohio, compiled by Hope Taft, former first lady of Ohio, and Debra Knapke, based on Robert Henn's book, "Wildflowers of Ohio."
"Hope and Debra expanded Henn's list to include many of the native plant species found in the Heritage Garden at the Ohio Governor's Residence," said Nancy Linz, an Ohio gardener and educator and one of the driving forces behind Ohio Native Plant Month. "This chart is not intended to include all of Ohio’s native plants, but Hope and Debra’s list isexcellent for Ohio gardeners interested in adding native plants to their gardens and learning more about these plants."