We ain’t from around here
For the past several years, I’ve attempted to identify a blooming tree across the street from my driveway. It sits high in a heavily treed section of woods and the way the land drops off from the road and the way the weeds and woodland rubbish congest the area make it impossible for me to get very close to it, especially without peril of getting snake-bit or worse, chigger-bit. I can’t even get close enough to get a good picture of the blooms so that I might take it to my friends on the interweb for assistance.
The tree has confused me for a while. It’s leaves are similar to a wisteria vine, and in early May it is loaded with large clusters of purple blooms, but they are completely different from the blooms of the wisteria. It is decidedly a tree rather than a vine, and it blooms a good couple of weeks or more after the grape-cluster blooms of wisteria have faded away. The scent I thought might be coming from it is confused by the perfume of privet and honeysuckle, making it impossible to isolate, and so I have remained clueless.
In full disclosure I should say that I may have figured out what it was last year, but I don’t tend to write these things down, though I always wish that I had. In April my dad asked if I had yet seen tulip poplars blooming in Georgia. We beekeepers pay attention to these common trees because they are a big source of nectar and pollen for the bees. About a week later, I saw one blooming on April 27 and let him know. He replied that he had looked back and found that, while he was keeping bees in Georgia, he had noted that tulip poplars bloomed on April 22 in 1980 and on April 10th in 1982. I’m not kidding! How awesome is it that 1.) he made such notes, 2.) could put his hands on them so easily, and 3.) we could use them to compare to the timing nearly 40 years later? I can only hope to learn from his model and start taking better notes.
Getting back to the mystery tree, I was recently driving out towards Kingston when I noticed there was a clump of the mystery trees growing on the edge of a vacant lot, perfectly placed for the closer look I’d been craving. I snagged a branch and used my newfound knowledge of its character to peg it as a chinaberry tree. I was glad to finally have an answer, but sad to realize that it is just another lowly non-native invasive. In my mind, that title is accompanied by a thunder clap and ominous organ chords, because I have great disdain for this category of pesky plants.
Privet, wisteria, mimosas, kudzu, nandinas and English ivy are all examples of non-native plants, brought to the US from other places and have now become problems, choking out native species wherever they take root. There are very legitimate concerns for how they dominate our Georgia landscape, so it is purely justified
to use a few dirty words to describe them.
I recently met with my yard guy to talk about taking out a bunch of scraggly plants around my yard, and most of them were on this list. But, as I talked with him, I began to realize that I am pretty much a big ol’ hypocrite.
I inherited a bunch of nandinas when I moved in years ago. They have flourished under my lazy maintenance habits, growing like the veritable weeds that they are. Their berries can be poisonous to some birds and I look forward to greatly reducing their population here, but I found myself asking him to leave the ones along the fence in the backyard because I love to cover my mantle with their garishly red berries at Christmas.
How could I find any value in such an imposter?
I am ashamed as I write this, knowing how my purist gardening friends will look down their noses at this admittance, but it made me think about my perspective on these plants that are such a part of our environment, no matter how they found their way here.
The wisteria along my street is killing trees as it climbs, I am sure of it, but it is one of my favorite things to photograph when it blooms in the spring, and the grapey scent is a true harbinger of the season. The mimosa that hangs over the pond above my house is downright beautiful to me, and the privet that I so dearly detest is a tremendous food source for bees and other pollinators at a time when most blooms are fading.
As I grappled with my conflicting feelings, I found comfort in recognizing that if you really think about it, most of us are nasty non-native invasives ourselves! When I had my genetic heritage tested I was sad to find that I have almost no Native American blood, and am instead a blend of mostly English and Irish with about 20 other nationalities sprinkled in for flavor. There was even notation of a long-extinct Siberian tribe with which I would be hard-pressed to feel any kindred connection, and yet the genetics are coursing through my veins.
I’m not planning to start campaigning for the plants that I have mentioned, they really are a problem, but when I think of them I will recall the Native Americans who found themselves invaded by us overtaking imports. They had no choice but to find some way to live with our existence, likely seeking whatever small benefit we brought with us while painfully aware of the fact that we were choking them out of existence. The uncomfortable truth is that most of us ain’t from around here, and we just have to learn to live with it.
Monica Sheppard is a freelance graphic designer, beekeeper, mother and community supporter living in Rome.