Say Goodbye to Kousa Dogwood and Hello to (Native) Chickasaw Plum

Half my Chickasaw plum tree (Prunus angustifolia) died last winter and the other half doesn’t seem at all affected so I’m just letting it be. I’ve also noticed birds, particularly hummingbirds, love to perch on the bare, spikey branches of the dead half of the tree to see predators above and forage for insects below.

The hummingbirds visiting my rewilded yard perch so often on the dead half of my Chickasaw plum that I call it my hummingbird tree!

I recently told a friend that just in case the other half eventually doesn’t make it I want to add another to my yard. My idea is to add a Chickasaw plum to my right-of-way strip to take the place of a Kousa dogwood, a non-native ornamental tree that doesn’t offer as much ecological support. Its exotic bumpy round fruit litters my sidewalk because the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks want nothing to do with it. Its leaves aren’t eaten by any caterpillars, birds don’t nest in it, and its only value seem to be a place for birds to perch on – which isn’t saying much because the thorny dead branches of the Chickasaw plum do a better job of this. The Kousa dogwood is native to parts of Asia where monkeys love its fruit – but of course there aren’t any monkeys in Atlanta to eat the fruit. This is what a plant out of place looks like.

The fruit of the Kousa dogwood is basically ignored by wildlife so it litters my sidewalk and rewilded right-of-way strip where the dogwood is planted.

When we moved to Atlanta twenty years ago a landscaper planted Kousa dogwoods for us when I told him I wanted dogwoods. I have a nostalgic softness for dogwoods because of a special one that grew outside my Connecticut bedroom window as a child that brought me great joy to watch throughout the year. It wasn’t until the Kousa dogwoods bloomed and the odd warty orangish red fruits appeared instead of the familiar clusters of oval red fruit that I realized they weren’t the native flowering dogwood of my youth. (known in horticulture as Cornus florida and botanically as Benthamidia florida)

When I told a landscaper I wanted dogwoods years ago, I wasn't specific about wanting the native ones with small shiny clusters of red berries.

When I asked for dogwoods, I didn’t know about the native dogwood blight that first appeared in the 1970s. It’s believed a fungus was accidentally introduced by the ornamental nursery industry which then helped its spread through plants shipped around the country. Ornamental Kousa dogwood became the replacement for the native dogwood because it coevolved with the fungus causing blight and is immune to it. This is why the landscaper planted the Kousa dogwood without even mentioning the blight situation. The kicker is that because of the blight, the Kousa dogwood is such a popular landscape staple that it is now an emerging invasive where the blight first appeared in the Northeast…where my childhood dogwood grew. About half of invasives were originally brought to the U.S. for ornamental, agricultural, medicinal, and other plant trade purposes and escaped cultivation at some point to outcompete and replace native plants.

The Kousa dogwood is a pretty ornamental tree but it doesn't pull its weight as habitat support in my rewilded landscape.

When we first had our front yard relandscaped, I didn’t know we already had a mature native flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) in our backyard until it bloomed the following spring. Native dogwoods are valuable habitat support plants and hosts 91 species of butterflies and moths according to the National Wildlife Federation website ranking plants by this metric. Unlike the undesirable fruit of the Kousa dogwood, the birds love the native dogwood fruit. I even have a small flowering dogwood now growing in my front yard that I can thank them for.

The true flower clusters of the native dogwood are in the center and what we think of as the flowers are actually modified leaves. They turn into the fruit birds and other wildlife devour.

Today the friend I told about my plan brought me a Chickasaw plum tree as a gift because she knows they are not always easy to find at native plant nurseries. Prunus species like the Chickasaw plum are so important to an ecosystem that they are what Doug Tallamy calls a keystone plant. I’m not the only one seeking them out for this reason.

I can't wait until late fall to plant my new Chickasaw plum!

In most of Georgie the Chickasaw plum leaves are devoured by 317 species of butterflies and moths

The Chickasaw plum leaves are a feast for hundreds of butterfly and moth caterpillars!

Birds nest in, perch on, and seek cover and shelter in the Chickasaw plum's thorny branches!

I often see ruby-crowned kinglets seeking shelter, resting, and foraging for early spring insects in the thorny Chickasaw plum. They are winter birds in Georgia and migrate away from us to the North in spring, but not until after the chickasaw plum leafs out.

Making an ecologically aligned landscaping decision can be as simple as choosing native over non-native. The simple act of adding native trees like a flowering dogwood or a Chickasaw plum is a low effort, high reward way to support life in our outside spaces. I’m grateful to have like-minded friends who understand my intensity around supporting habitat. As a bonus, my friend’s thoughtful gift to me will also become an ongoing gift to nature.

When the Chickasaw plum blooms it buzzing with early spring pollinators including tiny native bees.

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