Making It Grow Minutes

The State Plant Pest List committee worked with stakeholders and set the ban on this timeline to limit the impact on nurseries or propagation businesses, allow time for the industry and inspectors to receive adequate training, and still try to curb further damage done to our environment by these highly invasive foreign plants.

The first released cultivar of the flowering callery pear was named Bradford and it was easy to grow, pest free, flowered profusely and best of all could not fertilize itself and make viable seeds. But then other cultivars were released into the market resulting in viable pollen being produced and transferred all over the place by insects drawn to those flowers.

Large stands of them taking over fallow fields and roadsides. They crowd out plants that would provide nectar and pollen to a greater variety of beneficial insects over a longer period of time.

It is not and will not be illegal to have Bradford pears growing in your yard. However, they are now on the State Plant Pest list and beginning October first, two thousand twenty-four, nurseries will no longer sell Bradford pears or any other cultivar of the invasive flowering pear, Pyrus calleryanna.

If you’re interested in foraging, you might want to look in the old cookbook Charleston Receipts for the cherry bounce recipe.

Our native black cherry, Prunus serotina, is usually defaced this time of year by a large web of silk that houses several hundred leaf-eating Eastern tent caterpillars.

The wood that comes from our native black cherry tree, Prunus serotina, is the most prized in the forestry/timber industry. The wood has the beautiful deep red color valued by furniture makers, is strong, and is easy to work.

In the south, a fungal disease ruins its timber value, but to support wildlife, this tree should be tops on your list.

If you take a botany class, you learn that the leaves or stems of certain plants have aromatic compounds. Some of the aromas are pleasant, some definitely are not.

ur native trumpet creeper, Campsis radicans, has been introduced to China and is undermining a portion of the Great Wall.

North Carolina State’s Mountain Crop Improvement Laboratory developed a sterile cultivar of the Campsis vine.

With its long orange trumpet-shaped flowers, trumpet creeper is a hummingbird magnet.

Campsis radicans, has been known as “cow itch,” but, there is no evidence that it bothers cows at all.

The native vine Campsis radicans, trumpet creeper, is described as extremely vigorous – if it were non-native, it would be described as rampantly invasive. It doesn’t creep – it leaps and can cover a tall chain link fence and anything else it finds to climb by aerial roots and twining in and out of openings.

At Goodale State Park John Nelson and I examined the plant community growing on the swollen bases of pond cypress trees, Taxodium ascendens, rather than the better-known bald cypress, Taxodium disitichum.

A canoe trip in Goodale State Park is a great way to see the mini ecosystems that form around the bases of cypress trees.

Visit all forty-seven state parks and you can become a member of a special group eligible for programs offered just for super dedicated park visitors.

Elderberry stems are semi-woody, the interior is filled with pith. The late John Fairey, renowned botany professor at Clemson, told students that this pith was used to pack delicate scientific instruments and still used by repairmen to hold tiny parts of jewelry and such. Mason bees and other insects, however, have long used the older hollow stems as places to construct egg-laying or brood chambers. So if you have elderberries in your yard, cut a few stems half way down every year to expose that pith-filled interior to cavity nesting bees. Another option is to put stems and other small branches or rotting wood in a mulch pile. Then you can order a Pollinator Friendly Habitat sign from the Xerces Society. Read their page about building a better mulch pile for more ideas about making your yard pollinator friendly.

Professor Greg Reighard, Clemson researcher and international fruit specialist, explained that elderberries are primarily wind-pollinated. Although the flowers are extraordinarily showy, which you think would be a sign that they are attracting all sorts of pollinators, they don’t produce nectar so insect visitors are only collecting pollen. Still, their value to wildlife is high as the hundreds of dark purple fruits that each flower head produces are devoured by over 45 species of birds and racoons among others -- the Missouri Department of Conservation reports that a sharp-eyed naturalist even saw a box turtle eating fruits. But for people the entire plant contains compounds toxic to us, so this is one plant that grazers should not eat in the field. But properly prepared with heat, their berries have long been safely used for pies, wines and jellies.