Hello, Friend!
Have you heard of "keystone plants"?
Like the "key" stone in a Roman arch that holds the whole thing together, these are the native plants most important to sustaining a food web.
--> Here's a very cool keystone native plant finder by zip code!
We often hear how important it is to plant native plants and eliminate invasive species, but entomologist Doug Tallamy has discovered that a small subset of them are essential. 90 percent of caterpillars in the U.S. rely on just 14 percent of native plant species for food.
For a food web to function, the energy captured during photosynthesis in plants must be passed along up the food chain. Caterpillars transfer more of this energy than anything else. Their bodies are a protein-rich primary food source for many species, including the 96 percent of birds that rely on these larvae to feed their young.
Those caterpillars that don't get eaten turn into moths and butterflies that, along with bees, can act as pollinators. They're also important for the decomposition processes that return nutrients to soil.
Tallamy says, "Insects pollinate 90% of our flowering plants. Without insects, we’d lose these plants, which collapses the food web...We’d lose amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and even some freshwater fish.” Carrying that forward, he claims, “If insect populations continue to decline, the Earth will rot. Humans will not survive such a drastic change.”
Wow.
Feeling pretty bad now about those three tomato hornworms we killed yesterday. They would have been a hearty meal for some bird, or transformed into hummingbird moths. But that's not the point here.
Certain plants can support hundreds of different types of caterpillars -- in the case of oak trees, like 500! Playing that out, Tallamy says, “If you plant a single acorn, it will support tens of thousands of individuals of thousands of species during the tree’s lifetime.”
There are certain plants that are generally in the keystone category for most places in the U.S. -- oaks, willows, cherry trees, sunflowers, asters, and goldenrods. But there are so many more, and -- thankfully -- there's that handy-dandy native plant finder we shared above.
Check out the plants for your zip code -- which do you already have, on your property or in your neighborhood? Which can you add? If you aren't able to plant anything yourself, perhaps contribute to a community garden or the removal of invasive plants that threaten the native ones.
Faced with alarming statistics like a 78% reduction in insects like flying moths over the past 40 years, it's time to get planting -- for our insect friends and ourselves.
