The coneflower’s value to wildlife is widely recognized. It is a source of food for native pollinators such as native bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. In addition, long after its blooms fade, American goldfinches and other birds feed on the plant’s prickly seeds.
Those of us that plant this plant in our gardens enjoy the beauty of it uniquely shaped, colorful flowers. However, according to many herbalists, the value of this plant to humans may go far beyond its pleasing appearance. It has been purported to be beneficial in treating a wide variety of ailments. For example, it has been reported that chemicals found in the coneflower a natural antibiotic and even enhance white blood cell counts.
While I cannot substantiate claims of its medicinal values, I can attest to its value to wildlife. This year, for example, my wife and I enjoyed watching bumblebees and carpenter bees daily visiting the blooms of coneflowers growing in our backyard. 
In addition, the flowers produced by these plants were particularly popular with common buckeyes. In fact, this year we saw more common buckeyes on coneflowers than any other plant growing in our backyard. Numerous times, a single flower hosted four or more buckeyes.
To generations of Georgians, and all of the other folks that consider the blossom of flowering dogwood to be a symbol of spring, it might come as a surprise to learn that an argument can be made the flowers of this iconic tree are not actually white.
The experts base this claim on the fact that the creamy, white petals that are the focal point of one of Nature’s most beautiful floral creations are not petals at all. These petal-like structures are technically bracts. The tree’s small flowers form the greenish-yellow button-like structure located at the center of the bracts.
Although, I know plant experts are correct in making a distinction between bracts and petals, I am also certain the most people will continue to believe flowering dogwood flowers are white and not yellow.
Most Georgia homeowners are not fans of greenbrier. Greenbrier vines constantly try to smother our shrubs, trees, and gardens. Whenever we get near them, their thorny vines seemly try to leap out and snag our clothing or prick our skin. However, would you belief this menacing native vine is a source of winter food for backyard birds? It is true.
Greenbrier’s shiny dark berries are gobbled up by more than 40 species of songbirds including backyard favorites such as the hermit thrush, American robin, northern flicker, northern mockingbird, gray catbird, northern cardinal, and sparrows.
If you were asked to name four plants that are associated with Christmas, what would you say? You could not go wrong if you listed the holly, poinsettia, mistletoe, and the Christmas tree. All of these plants will always be inexorably linked to this special holiday. However, in the hearts and minds of most Americans, the plant that symbolizes Christmas more than any other is the Christmas tree.
Each year millions of Americans center their celebration of this special holiday around the Christmas tree. A number of different kinds of trees are used as Christmas trees. According to The National Christmas Tree Foundation, the ten most popular Christmas trees are, in descending order of popularity, the Frazer fir, Douglas fir, Colorado blue spruce, Scotch pine, eastern red-cedar, white spruce, eastern white pine and Virginia pine.
However, throughout much of the 20th century, for most Georgians, the Christmas tree of choice was the eastern red cedar. Most of us refer to this evergreen tree as simply cedar. The tree is abundant, has a natural “Christmas tree” shape, and fills a room with the pleasant aroma of cedar.
Nowadays, the popularity of the cedar has waned. Some folks are buying artificial numbers fabricated from aluminum or plastic. The majority of those that still use a natural tree are choosing firs, spruces, pines, or Leyland cypresses over the cedar.
Fortunately, for our backyard wildlife neighbors, eastern red cedars are showing up in home landscapes with increasing regularity. This is due in large part to tree’s attractive conical shape, resistance to disease and drought and low maintenance. It should not be overlooked that it is also so valuable to wildlife and deserves the title of The Wildlife Christmas Tree.
Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that the eastern red cedar provides wildlife with food, nesting sites and protection from the elements and predators, its importance to wildlife is rarely appreciated.
This native cedar can be found growing throughout most of the eastern United States. It ranges across 37 states from as far north as New England south to Georgia and west to Texas. It is a common tree throughout most of Georgia, with the exception of our coastal counties.
This is the cedar commonly found growing around abandoned house sites, vintage homes, and old cemeteries and along fence lines.
The eastern red cedar is an extremely adaptable plant. It can be found with its roots sunk into the damp flood plains that hug our rivers all the way to dry, red clay hilltops. About the only place is does not do well is under a heavy forest canopy.
More often than not, the cedars we see growing in fencerows have been unknowingly planted by birds. Cedar seeds are very hard and often pass unscathed through a bird’s digestive system. When a bird perches on a fence and leaves behind a dropping containing cedar seeds, the hard seeds often germinate and eventually become a young tree.
Eastern red cedar trees are ideally suited for most yards. These long-lived (300+ years), slow-growing evergreen trees can reach a height of 60 feet or more and measure two feet in diameter.
Here in the Peach State, eastern red cedars bloom in February and March. Small (1/4″) fleshy, greenish, blue berry-like cones mature from October to December. Each cone usually contains two hard seeds. The cones often persist until the following March. This is extremely important as they provide food for wildlife throughout the winter when food is often hard to come by.
One of the great things about red cedars is that they can be relied upon to fruit annually. Bumper crops are produced every second or third year.
Hosts of animals eat eastern red cedar foliage and fruits. For example, both rabbits and deer will consume the foliage.
More than two dozen birds dine on eastern red cedar fruits. This impressive list includes such backyard favorites as the American robin, northern mockingbird, brown thrasher, mourning dove, eastern bluebird, and cedar waxwing. As you might expect, cedar waxwings are extremely fond of this winter food. The berry-like cones are also eaten by wild turkeys and quail. Coyotes, opossums, chipmunks, and even armadillos consume them.
The tree is also the host plant for the beautiful, petite juniper hairstreak butterfly. This often-elusive butterfly spends its entire life in close proximity to cedar trees. Females lay their eggs on the cedars. Upon hatching, the caterpillars eat cedar foliage.
Even the adults are invariably found on the trees. Often the only way that you can hope to see a juniper hairstreak is to tap on the trunk of a cedar tree. If the butterflies are present, they will briefly fly upwards before settling back into the thick, green foliage again.
A number of birds build their nests in cedar trees including northern cardinals, brown thrashers, northern mockingbirds, American robins, and common grackles.
The tree’s dense foliage makes it ideally suited for escape cover. Birds will often fly into cedars to escape pursuing hawks. Also, cedar trees provide protection against rain, snow, and sleet. In fact, during the winter, the interior of a cedar tree provides an ideal roosting spot on cold, blustery winter nights. At least 21 species of birds use the trees as roosting sites.
Some of the birds known to roost there are chipping sparrows, northern cardinals, wild turkeys, and eastern screech owls.
I strongly suspect wintering hummingbirds such as the rufous hummingbird also roosts in these trees since I often find that they are frequently the only good roosting sites available in yards frequented by these western migrants.
It appears that the eastern red cedar may never again be the most popular Christmas tree in the Georgia. However, the fact it is prospering throughout the state and is even becoming an integral part of backyard landscapes insures that this tree will remain an important wildlife plant well into the future.
On Christmas eve, when I look at the my Christmas tree surrounded by lovingly wrapped presents, I will find it comforting to know that not too far from my backdoor stands my large wildlife Christmas tree. Although no colored lights hang from its spreading boughs, on the ground beneath it, there will be untold numbers of tiny blue nutrient-rich presents ready to be discovered on Christmas day by my hungry wildlife neighbors. And when I pull up the covers and drift off into sleep, I will know that the birds roosting in the tree are protected from the harshest winter weather.
If you are planning to build a new home on a site where one or more eastern red cedars are growing, leave them standing. On the other hand, if no cedars are growing in your yard, plant one or more. In either case, you will be giving your wildlife neighbors gifts that never stop giving.
As such, by offering our backyard neighbors with a dependable source of food, nesting sites, and cover, it deserves to be called the wildlife Christmas tree.
© Terry W. Johnson originally published in “The Out My Backdoor” column featured in Georgia Wild E-Newsletter
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If you are like me, in spite of the fact it is late November, butterflies are still flying about your backyard. During the past few days I have seen or have had heard of zebra heliconians, cloudless sulphurs, sleepy oranges, fiery skippers, common buckeyes, common checkered skippers, pearly crescents and both American and painted ladies feeding in backyards in Middle Georgia.
Remarkably, I still have a few plants that are still providing these butterflies and other wild pollinators with food. However, one of the plants that has proven to be one of the best sources of late season nectar and pollen is a butterfly bush named sky blue (Buddlea davidii).
This is a miniature butterfly bush that anywhere from three to four feet tall and three feet in diameter. This makes it ideal for large and small gardens as well as large pots.
In my area, the plant has extended blooming season from late spring well into late fall. In fact, right now it has as many blooms on it as it has displayed all year.
The purple flowers are both beautiful and fragrant. In fact, the blossoms’ fragrant honey scent is especially pleasing.
It grows in zones 5-9 and does well in a variety of soil types ranging from loam to the clay-type soils found in my yard. It does best in soils with a pH ranging from 5.5-7.0.
This small butterfly bush has been a pollinator magnet for weeks on end. However, its nectar and pollen are perhaps more important to the wild pollinators right now than at any other time this year.
Try sky blue and let me know how it does in your backyard.
For our backyard bird neighbors that eat fruits and berries, autumn is a time of plenty. During this glorious time of the year, many of the native and ornamental plants that grow in our yards are laden with fruits and berries. Most of these plants such as oaks, dogwoods, sumacs, zinnias, are easily recognizable. However, other fruit and berry-bearing plants are often overlooked. Believe it or not, one such plant is poison ivy. 
I doubt that even the most dedicated wildlife enthusiasts encourage poison ivy to grow in their yards. However, as hard as we might try to eliminate this woody vine from our property, invariably the plant’s woody vines decorated with three leaflets crop up again and again.
Should you find a healthy poison ivy vine growing in an undeveloped corner or along the edge of your yard, as long it could serve as a source of food for birds without posing as a threat to you.
If the dried fruits and seeds are not gobbled up in the fall, they provide a nutritious source of food for more than a dozen backyard birds well into winter.
The list of birds known to eat the fruits and seeds of this reviled native include the eastern bluebird, Carolina chickadee, northern flicker, dark-eyed junco, ruby-crowned kinglet, yellow-bellied sapsucker, white-throated sparrow, tufted titmouse, yellow-rumped warbler, northern mockingbird, brown thrasher, as well as hairy, downy, and red-bellied woodpeckers.
If you look at your yard as a giant smorgasbord, it may be a little easier for you to look at a smattering of poison ivy vines in a different light. Just do not touch them.
