Green is Good?

 

The gray days of winter bring a lot of bare branches to the landscape, so the appearance of something green can be a welcome sight. Green signals visible life while those bare branches—pretty as they are against a blue winter sky—are unknown in terms of what comes next for them.

Native evergreen plants are more abundant in the Coastal Plain ecoregion of Georgia, and many of the shrubs and trees we now use in the Piedmont have come from there: yaupon holly, wax myrtle, Florida anise, Southern magnolia, and Carolina cherry laurel to name a few of those. We have Piedmont evergreens but they aren’t propagated as much and many prefer shade: rhododendrons, mountain laurel, hemlock, American holly, and the native Eastern redcedar (technically a juniper). An earlier blog of mine featured some of these choices.

American holly (Ilex opaca) in winter

Unfortunately, the evergreens that we see the most of now are an assortment of non-native plants: privets (Ligustrum sp.) that come from Asia as well as these plants: Nandina; hollies (this year appears to be a very productive year for fruit on Ilex cornuta); English ivy; Mahonia; two species of autumn olive (Elaeagnus sp.); winter creeper (Euonymus fortunei); Japanese honeysuckle; and two species of Vinca. Not only are these plants willingly placed in our landscapes, but many of them have then escaped (via wildlife) to our natural areas and neighbors’ yards.

English ivy doesn't stay in one place

Winter is a perfect time to spot, remove, or mark these giant weeds. People always ask why should we bother to do so. Foremost, the best reason is that removing them gives back space to our native plants. Some of these invasive plants make large thickets where only they grow. Native insects and birds don’t thrive in these monocultures because there is less for them to eat. Second, removing these plants and their clusters of seeds/fruit means that we can reduce their spread into potential new areas, meaning less clean-up in the future.

So, is green a good sign in the winter landscape? Only when it is native and appropriate for your ecoregion! Non-native green should be identified and—if it is one of the known invasive plants—removed from our landscapes and natural areas.