Native Plant Profile: Common Hackberry

Maryland Wildlife: Opossum

Pruning Trees in Late Winter

Coffee & Orioles

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HABITAT - the arrangement of food, water, cover, and space -IS THE KEY!  This newsletter is a place to share ideas, information,  and help answer some of your habitat and wildlife gardening concerns.

Hackberry is a hardy slow growing tree. It can grow to 14 feet in 10 years, possible to reach 40-50 feet at maturity. Is capable of living 150-200 years. Occurs on a variety of sites, moist to dry, but best growth is in alkaline soils. Found growing in open places or mixed hardwood forests as an occasional rather than abundant species. Fruit persists into winter, which makes it valuable as a food source for winter wildlife. The tree is used frequently for nesting by many birds.

Flowers/fruits: Green flowers April to May. Dark red to purple drupes ripen from September to November and are relished by wildlife. Drupes are sweet, edible; hence the other name for Hackberry is Sugarberry Tree.

Landscape Notes: Member of the elm family, with the arching similar to the American Elm. Hackberries do not reach the heights of the elms so are more suitable for a small location. Lowest branches occur high on trunk, desirable among street trees. Can be planted as specimens or in rows for windbreaks or hedgerows.

Landscape Concerns: Subject to disease called witches –broom, which causes abnormal growth on twigs of branches that resemble brooms. Disease does not affect its wildlife value.

Hackberries are food for: Turkey, Bobwhite Quail, Pheasant, Common Flicker, Pileated Woodpecker, Common Crow, Tufted Titmice, Mockingbird, Catbird, Brown Thrasher, American Robin, Eastern Bluebird, Cedar Waxwing, Cardinal, Rufous Sided Towhee, Fox Sparrow, Evening Grosbeak, Eastern Phoebe, Raccoon, Gray and Flying Squirrels

Hackberry leaves are food for caterpillars of the Question Mark, Comma, Hackberry, Tawny Emperor, Snout and Mourning Cloak butterflies.

Additional Notes: Hackberries provide food for a wide variety of wildlife, including some spectacular butterflies that are not easily attracted to a butterfly nectar garden.

 Coffee & Orioles

Wintertime is often a time when many escape to the tropics to enjoy sun and palm trees. For Baltimore Orioles, winter paradise is a coffee plantation, shade and Inga trees. Every year, Baltimore Orioles and over 200 other migratory birds leave their summer habitats in North America and travel to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean Islands. As in North America, habitat loss in the tropics has paradise hard to come by. The answer may lie in your cup of coffee.

Coffee is the developing word’s second most valuable export. Two thirds of the word’s coffee is produced in Central America and the Caribbean. It is grown in the world’s tropical rainforest regions on hillsides at 1500 to 4500 feet above sea level. Coffee can be grown large scale in harmony with native forest. Up into the mid 1970’s most coffee was grown on coffee plantations in the under story of wild figs, mangos, citrus fruits, and nuts.

Studies in the tropics suggest that coffee traditionally grown in the shade of the tropic rainforest trees provides habitat for numerous migratory birds and other wildlife. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird center found that shaded coffee plantations can support 150 bird species and is especially important habitat for wintering Baltimore Orioles. The structural diversity offered by these plantations and their rainforest canopy also provides habitat for reptiles, small mammals and other wildlife. Coffee agro ecosystems do work.

Of all the agricultural transformations that have taken place in the tropics, shade coffee has been the least harmful to birds. Encouraging farmers to grow shade coffee can have an immense impact on habitat for all wildlife, not just migratory birds such as Orioles.

So what can you do to help the Orioles and still enjoy that cup of coffee?

1. Buy shade-grown coffee for your home use.

2. Ask your retailer to carry it.

3. Convert the office to brewing only shade-grown coffee.

4. Educate friends and co-workers. Give gifts that include shade-grown coffee.

5. Learn more about the issue from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center: http://natzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndSciencce/MigratoryBirds/Coffee

Acknowledgements:

• Botanical illustration of Common Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), courtesy of USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. Illustrated flora of the northern states and Canada. Vol. 1: 629.

• Photograph of Common Hackberry, courtesy of USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Herman, D.E. et al. 1996. North Dakota tree handbook. USDA NRCS ND State Soil Conservation Committee; NDSU Extension and Western Area Power Admin., Bismarck, ND.

• Photo collage of Common Hackberry tree, bark & foliage courtesy of Conservation Trees and Shrubs, Pocket ID Guide, United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service.

• Photograph of Opossum family in tree, courtesy of photographer Alden M. Johnson, California Academy of Sciences, CalAcademy Collection. Copyright © 1999 California Academy of Sciences.

• Photograph of single Opossum on log, courtesy of Bob Gress, Illinois Trapping and Furbearer Image Library.

• Photograph of Shade-grown coffee, courtesy of Courtesy of USFWS, Photo by Francisco Osuna, Elan Organic Coffees.

• Photograph of coffee tree Courtesy of USFWS, Photo by Francisco Osuna, Elan Organic Coffees.

• Illustration of Baltimore Oriole, courtesy of Wade Henry.

Here is a listing of phone numbers, web sites and organizations that you might find helpful or interesting in your search for ideas to manage your wild acres. DNR Online... Inspired by nature! www.dnr.maryland.gov 

Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. FeederWatchers periodically count the highest numbers of each species they see at their feeders from November through early April. FeederWatch helps scientists track broadscale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance. Project FeederWatch is operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in partnership with the National Audubon Society, Bird Studies Canada, and Canadian Nature Federation. http://birds.cornell.edu/pfw

National Wildlife Federation - Details on their backyard habitat program www.nwf.org or call them at 1-800-822-9919.

Native plants - The Maryland Native Plant Society offers information dedicated to protecting, conserving and restoring Maryland's native plants and habitats, visit them at www.mdflora.org. 

Maryland Cooperative Extension offers home and garden information, tips publications, plant problems, Bay issues, and other links at www.agnr.umd.edu/MCE/index.cfm  Their Home and Garden Information number is statewide and can be reached at 1-800-342-2507, and from outside Maryland at 1-410-531-1757. 

Bioimages, a project of Vanderbilt University, provides educational information to the public on biologically related topics, as well as a source of biological images for personal and non-commercial use. http://bioimages.cas.vanderbilt.edu/

Maryland's "Becoming an Outdoors - Woman Program "- One of the topics covered in the three-day workshops is Backyard Wildlife.

For a free wildlife & native plant newsletter, visit the WindStar Wildlife Institute at www.windstar.org and subscribe to the WindStar Wildlife Garden Weekly e-newsletter. You can also visit this website to learn how you can become a certified wildlife habitat naturalist.

For more information on butterflies - visit the North American Butterfly Association at www.naba.org

Warm season grasses and wild meadows for upland nesting birds visit Pheasants Forever at www.pheasantsforever.org or e-mail: pf@pheasantsforever.org