What should I put here?

Tuesday, 09 Sep 08 (posted about 4 months ago)

Since I was a little girl, I’ve always wanted a magnolia tree, and actually this year finally cleared a spot for it. But now I’m thinking about my missing birds and wondering if there is a berry-bearing tree that might bring some of them back. I don’t want a shrub or low-branching plant (maybe, I think), as it would be the wrong shape and scale for the location (?). Any recommendations? I’m Zone 5, backyard is fairly sheltered, the first photo shows the size of the spot (black plastic is theoretically killing an invasive grass), second photo shows the border— the area in question is two-thirds of the way above the shade line on the right.

Update, 10/11/08
As usually happens, I got impatient and put in heather, berberis, and blue mist spirea (courtesy of Janietta) along with dividing and spreading out the phlox, cantbells and prairie cones from the neighboring bed, which will extend nice fall color all the way down the border. (Color succession is very uneven right now).

Of course, this doesn’t make me give up on my desire for a bird-magnet tree, so now I’m scheming for a whole new planting area to put it in.

Want to comment?

Puu wrote:
mulberry?

Posted on 11 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
South Sun Spot wrote:
Cotoneaster Cornubia is a fast growing small well shaped tree, evergreen here on the South Coast of England. It is covered with heads of white flowers in spring (for the bees) red berried in the autumn (for the birds). But what I find particularly attractive is the new leaves in spring, they stand upright along the spreading braches displaying their silvery underside. Cotoneaster frigidis is another heavy berrying tree.

There are several Sorbus which also form attractive trees, S vilmorinii makes a very graceful tree (red berries), S. ‘Joseph Rock’ has amber-yellow berries. Sorbus provide good autumn leaf colour. S. scalaris produces a very heavy drops of berries and is particularly good for autumn colour.

But in truth you need to know what birds are local to you, and what trees grow naturally or are native to your area. In other words native trees are far more likely to attract native birds. Bear in mind too that different tress will attract different birds.

Posted on 14 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Nax wrote:
South Sun Spot— thanks; I’ll talk to the arborist about local versions of these. The birds that went missing are red, purple and yellow finches, thrushes (except robins, they’re still here), grackles, morning doves, cardinals and starlings. The finches like berries, the thrushes and grackles like ground cover, the cardinals like lots of levels and good look-outs. All the birds like each other and avoid pigeons. Ground cover probably isn’t going to happen, so I guess I’m trying to get the finches, cardinals and doves back. Any midwesterners here with suggestions?

Posted on 14 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Puu wrote:
for Sorbus, how about a Rabina mountain ash? edible berries for you and the birds.

Posted on 15 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Nax wrote:
Puu— that’s nice, good size, works in my zone. It’s on the list. Anyone else?

Posted on 15 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Verthandei wrote:
What about elderberry/elder (_Sambucus_)? There are a number of species that are (I think) native to N.Am. Maybe American Elder? Usually it is described as as a shrub, I think, but there is a tree on the property of my apartment that I think is an elder and it has been trained into tree-form (with the lowest hanging branches above head-height). In early summer it was covered in bees. The berries are not ripe yet, so I don’t know how many birds it will attract (presumably a lot).

ETA: I think what we have is a different species than American Elder, but I still think it is an Elder. Maybe ask at you local nursery if there are any native sp. that can be trained to tree-habit?

Posted on 15 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Puu wrote:
an Eleagnus might work, too. goumi (E. multiflora), autumn olive (E. umbellata), and silverberry (E. pungens ‘Aureo-maculata’) come to mind. silverberry flowers in fall and ripens fruit in spring, which might be a boon to you and the birds in that fruit-deprived season…

Posted on 16 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Nax wrote:
It’s a beautiful bush, Puu, but it looks like it’s considered invasive in northern Illinois .

Posted on 16 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Planting Oaks wrote:
Magnolia’s I’ve seen here do have (red) berries in fall. Might not be edible though, I don’t really know much about them.

My and my birds’ personal favorite is serviceberry (amelanchier). My biggest concern is if it might be too ‘low and branching’ for your spot. It is a tree, but generally smaller than magnolia trees.

Posted on 16 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Puu wrote:
ooh, how about a standard gooseberry? not sure what rootstock is used, but the result is a gooseberry tree instead of the typical tangled bush. don’t know how birds would feel about it…

and yeah, quite a few Eleagnus species are considered invasive in quite a few places. if you find out that they’re already around, though, you won’t really be causing a new problem. but that’s a whole other can of worms…

Posted on 16 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Nax wrote:
lol, puu, already made that mistake when I ignorantly planted loosestrife that I, um, liberated from the prairie near my dad’s house. I just keep my fingers crossed that no ecopolice ever move in where they can see my backyard…

I’m keeping these all on my list to talk with the arborist, but it looks like serviceberry for the win! Thank you PlantingOaks!

Posted on 16 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Verthandei wrote:
Purple loosestrife….no!!!!!!!

You can liberate that stuff all you like, provided you kill it afterwards. :)

Posted on 17 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Puu wrote:
loosestrife is a whole other story. a single loosestrife plant can produce millions of seeds in a year and ruin waterways in short order. Eleagnus pungens, on the other hand, is a very useful (fixes nitrogen), delicious, and nutritious (full of vitamins, flavonoids, etc.) plant.
but for what it’s worth, I absolutely approve of serviceberry.

Posted on 17 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Nax wrote:
In my defense, I will mention that the loosestrife has never naturalized even in my own yard— still just the single plant, so I think beginners luck led me to someone’s cultivar. I did however, learn my lesson.

Posted on 18 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Verthandei wrote:
Well if it hasn’t naturalized even in your yard then perhaps you did luck out. Whew! Dodged the bullet on that one!

Posted on 18 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Puu wrote:
and the lesson you learned is…? that invasive weeds aren’t always that bad? clearly other plant life continues to survive despite the introduction of that terrible invader. I wasn’t giving you a hard time about the loosestrife, Nax, just pleading the cause of a humble eleagnus.

Posted on 20 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Nax wrote:
No sweat, didn’t think that. I’ve always felt both guilty and relieved about the loosestrife. My early gardening was a study in “natural” gardening which I lived to regret, because I brought in a lot of wild plants that I have spent the rest of my gardening days trying to eradicate because they crowd out and kill other plants that I want. The lesson I learned is that when you’re dealing with wild plants you should understand what you’re bringing in, especially if it is from outside your region. I dodged a bullet with the loosestrife, through sheer stupid luck. And I do like the look of the eleagnus. Like I said, everything’s on the list until I talk to the arborist.

Posted on 20 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Puu wrote:
another take on purple loosestrife, from David Thodoropoulos’ Invasion Biology: Critique of a Pseudoscience:
(this is a bit long, forgive me)
Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) is “an aggressive invader, it has displaced native vegetation and detroyed waterfowl habitat by forming dense, nearly monotypic stands” (Hight 1993). “[P]urple loosestrife, an aggressive Eurasian plant that can overrun a North American wetland and reduce its wildlife value to roughtly that of a parking log” (Bright 1998). Th National Invasive Species Council (NISC) places it in their top ten invaders (at the time of this writing).
Nevertheless, Anderson (1995) reviewed 34 papers on loosestrife and found records of 29 native species of wildlife using the plant, and many records of native species out-competing it. Many insects including native lepidoptera utilize the plant (Barbour & Kiviat 1997), and goldfinch (Spinus) nest in it (Kiviat 1978). In a study of 41 plots in Ontario, no significant difference in vascular plant species richness was found, regardless of the presence of purple loosestrife, no differences in number of introduced species, nor was species richness affected by increasing percentage of loosestrife cover. A numjber of native species were more likely to grow in plots containing purple loosestrife (Treburg & Husband 1999). Whitt et al. (1999) studied 258 plots over two years in purple loosestrife stands in Lake Huron wetlands, and found higher avian densities than other vegetation types at somewhat lower diversities, including ten breeding species in loosestrife dominated habitats. They conclude “that avian use of loosestrife warrants further quantitative investigation because avian use may be higher than is commonly believed.”
Hager and McCoy (1998) “traced the history of purple loosestrife and its control in North Ameica and found little scientific evidence consistent with the hypothesis that [it] has deleterious effects… Loosestrife was initially assumed to be a problem without actually determining whether this was the case… there is currently no scientific justification for the control of loosestrife…” Yet loosestrife is still touted as an "invader"—Pimentel et al. (2000) give it top billing and claim $45 million in control and loss costs in the United States alone, and the NISC features it prominently on their website (at the time of this writing). Further, the use of herbicide to control purple loosestrife “often results in short-term reductions, but the species re-invades within a few years, often in higher abundances than untreated areas” (Blossey et al. 2001; Skinner et al. 1994).

Posted on 25 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)
Nax wrote:
I’ve just been reading J.L. Hudson on seed dissemination and so-called invasive species (I’ve been into weeds lately). His belief is that moving plant species around the world is one of the few ecological activities that humans get right. I think he’d be fine with the loosestrife in my yard. (found Hudson via Michael Pollack, another great garden writer). At any rate, too late now!

Posted on 25 Sep 08 (about 4 months ago)