[sturmdev]

I’m always pleased to see this topic get more attention. Almost everywhere, it’s common for non-native trees, shrubs, and flowers to be planted instead of species native to the area. This is true for residential yards, city land, etc.

Non-native plants are often useless hosts for native insects. So installing non-native plants has the “benefit” of reducing insects, but it also has serious effects on ecosystems and biodiversity.

We need to be more worried about the extinction of insect species. They’re more important than people realize.

If anyone wants to make a (small, but important) difference, do some research to identify important host plants for native insect species in your area. There are usually good, native alternatives for flowers, shrubs, and trees which are equally as attractive. Then, choose these host plants for your yard or garden.

[austin-cheney]

> Non-native plants are often useless hosts for native insects.

The opposite can also be true such that some non-native plants can demonstrate overly desirable results compared to native plants. This is seen with many forms of squash/gourd/pumpkin in North America that results in wider and more aggressive distributions of herbivorous insects that favor those plant types over native plants.

[galangalalgol]

There is also a problem for manarch butterflies when people plant flowering plants they like, but in zones a bit colder than normal, and protect them from frost or replant. They bloom later than the butterflies expect, so they hang around too long on their migration and freeze.

[stinos]

native alternatives for flowers, shrubs, and trees which are equally as attractive

Thanks for using plural here. Nothing really wrong with the article, but the focus on single plants is a bit misguided when it comes to biodiversity (and this isn't the only article like that), because it can lead to greenwashing-like 'look I planted X in my lawn and it's good for this amazing number of species so now I'm doing a good thing for nature'.

In reality the worst case is that it is actually a netto negative outcome (bit far fetched, but not impossible, via principles like: insects attracted to your plant instead of another one closeby, your plant in its environment offers zero protection from predation because it's completely out in the open vast wasteland a lot of lawns are; or: insect finds hostplant X, lays eggs, in winter you decide to cut the plant 'becomes in cmes back anyway' and the eggs are lost) and best case it is positive; but it could be a lot more positive if instead of just the plant, you have a healthy ecosystem because biodiversity (and that's not just plants and the flying/crawling things one can see, also the nocturnal creatures, the soil life, etc) thrives on that, not individual species. Just like a collection of trees isn't necessarily a forest ecosystem, a bunch of flowering grassland plants isn't necessarily a proper meadow-like ecosystem.

How to get that is unfortunately too much to explain in detail here, but a simplified system for a lawn for instance starts with not mowing the whole thing every x weeks. Instead do cut the paths you need and treat the rest as patchwork where each patch has a different age like 1 month not mown, 2 months, etc. There's even no need to manually plant things, the native ones will come automatically.

[AdamN]

There is a nuance that sometimes what was native 100 years ago simply won't survive anymore because the lack of the previously existing ecosystem. For instance a plant that needs shade and high humidity that is no longer viable because the trees have all been cut down.

[asimpletune]

This is random but when I read about the importance of insect specious it reminded me of how this summer we had noticeably less mosquitos where I live. It felt like there were none at all and I spent the whole summer being able to leave my doors open at night. At the same time there was a huge influx of grasshoppers that summer and I think the two are probably connected.

[MegaDeKay]

If there is any connection at all, I think it would be a pretty weak one. Grasshoppers don't eat mosquitoes and mosquitoes don't (I think) feed off grasshoppers. However, these critters are quite sensitive to the weather: lots of rain favors mosquitoes and dry hot weather favors grasshoppers. A lot of little critters also have a cycle. Tent catapillars around where I live are on an eleven year cycle. In the valleys of the cycle, you won't see a single one all year. In the peaks, there is enough to defoliate large trees.

[I_Am_Nous]

Especially if there was a cold winter the year before. I remember talking to an orchard worker who lamented how the frost came early and killed a lot of the fruit before they could be harvested. He said "At least there won't be any bugs next year!" and it really opened my eyes to how these cycles can work over such extreme swings.

[bitbckt]

In the US, your local Cooperative Extension is a valuable resource for advice on this topic - and many others!