Walking my dog, earlier this week, I was curious about all the Crape Myrtles around the neighborhood. There's SO MANY. Also: they have pretty flowers; they have pretty wood; they have a pretty shape; they grow very prettily.
I'm slowly building my knowledge of local fauna. Especially if it's for our yard & garden. I aim to build it up to have an understanding of what is:
- indigenous to the area;
- helpful for the local wildlife;
- good for the pollinators;
- lacking in terms of local need of plants.
A fun surprise: crape myrtles aren't native to the United States, but don't have a super negative impact like kudzu or fire ants to the local ecosystems.
Evidently, they've been around in the United States since between 1787 and 1796; also introduced at Mount Vernon (George Washington's retirement plantation).
Goldfinches, dark-eyed juncos, house finches, cardinals, and house and white-throated sparrows visit the trees continually from early December through late February to devour the abundant seed crop that crape myrtles provide. It’s a recent adaptation that represents a dramatic shift in the diet of a significant number of native U.S. bird species to a non-native plant.
The paper, itself, that this interview is reporting from can be found here: bioone.org/journals/southeastern-naturalist/volume-17/issue-2/058.017.0212/Avian-Feeding-on-Seed-of-the-Exotic-Ornamental-Lagerstroemia-indica/10.1656/058.017.0212.short
URL: https://www.si.edu/stories/crape-myrtle-trees-arent-native-us-birds-find-them-tasty