Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants

by Douglas W. Tallamy

Because it is one of the few nonleguminous plants that fix nitrogen, autumn olive does well in poor soils and quickly colonizes fields and disturbed sites. Though it reaches a height of only 20 feet, autumn olive is a bushy multi-stemmed tree that shades out all native competitors. Monocultures of autumn and Russian olive are a common sight in the United States. Like oriental bittersweet, the foliage of autumn olive is inedible for almost all native insect herbivores. A field rich in goldenrod, Joe-Pye weed, boneset, milkweed, black-eyed Susan, and dozens of other productive perennials supplies copious amounts of insect biomass for birds to rear their young. After it has been invaded by autumn or Russian olive, that same field is nearly sterile.