In Praise of Scrub, Snags, Thickets, and Scraggly Vegetation

Laura Glendening, Board member

I recognize the human need for tidiness — strong solid homes, good roads, level sidewalks, and crisp, neat yards. But as I walk, listen, and look around Peaks Island I have found that our natural systems require some messiness.

Take our beaver snags down by the dump. Yeah, not that pleasing to the tidy eye — fallen trees, dead trees, mucky water, scrub. But can it be seen differently? I have observed here over the years: rows of painted turtles sunning themselves on partially submerged logs, night herons hunkered down in their bold and sly way, pileated woodpeckers, snowy egrets heavily and precariously perched on branches above the ponds, and I am sure there is so much more. The mess and muck are just part of an ongoing process: water, soil, plants, beavers, frogs, fish, herons, foxes, meadows, trees, humans.

I walked by a dense thicket of what looked like bamboo/japanese knotweed and bittersweet the other day, and I have to say it was the brightest most alive spot I came across that day — actually just singing with life, full of a flock of birds that couldn’t be happier, and their song said so. Yeah yeah yeah, bamboo and bittersweet, probably some thorny rose too, but what these or similar scrublands provide is protected space for birds, other critters, and maybe a glorious white oak sapling.

I know the tidiness we want for our yards, and sometimes our public spaces, does not often include scraggly vegetation, or ever invasive species like knotweed and bittersweet. But what else can we notice about these seemingly untidy places. Where do we see warblers, cardinals, chickadees, cedar waxwings, glossy ibis? Where do our native trees take root? Thinking about whole natural systems, can we visually see beauty and life in nature’s messiness?

So, scraggly, yet deserving much praise, here are some of my favorite native plants, found on our own Backshore, and that can be purchased in Maine nurseries for planting in yards:
• Staghorn sumac — is not poisonous, attracts chickadees, thrushes, warblers, cardinals, native bees
• Bayberry (Morella caroliniana) — with beautiful waxy berries that warblers like (no thorns and not the invasive Japanese barberry)
• Milkweed — every kids’ and monarch butterflies’ favorite
And I highly recommend Highbush cranberry (Viburnum opulus var. Americanum L. Ait). I have a great thicket in my yard and early every spring I look forward to the arrival of a feisty flock of cedar waxwings that devour the berries — red berries that have waited the whole winter to be eaten by just them.

You will find here an extensive list of other native Maine plants.