Doug Tallamy - The Living Landscape 

Amen!!!! I've posted on the DuPage Birding Club's Facebook page, as well as on my own, "John's Natural DuPage." Doug's philosophy and advice is the basis of a presentation I do on wildlife gardening.

Although plants might be in the same genera from overseas, they have been separated for so long that leaf composition is different enough that native insects can’t eat them, and it’s the insects that have to adapt to the plant, not the plant to the climate. Plants will become native in an area after some time and go through the ecological checks and balances, but how long does that take? 1,000 years? 10,000 years? 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? Humans can’t say for certain, but what is certain is that many species will go extinct due to loss of habitat based on models of recent decline, long before invasive plants become native. Don’t undervalue natives.

@@oscarflip8561 "So different" is not how being in the same genus works. Cladistics is a bit of a muddy science but all members of a genus are as close siblings. Species within the same genus are often close enough for species to cross breed and produce fertile hybrids. Any species that is too divergent from the group ends up in another genus (where to draw the lines, this is where the muddy comes in). Professor Tallamy indeed uses genus to identify the most useful larval food and pollinator plants on his website. As for how long it takes evolution to kick in there are endemic Hawaiian insects that feed exclusively of plants brought to the islands by the Polynesians. There is even a species of mosquito endemic to the London subway system. Nature abhors a vacuum and gets down to business. By all means go wild with the intential planting of native plants. That is a great idea but war is not a useful metaphor in talking about invasive species.

@@tadblackington1676 ‘different enough’ is the wording I should’ve used, but the point wasn’t to argue genetic structure anyways. While everything you said is true, the matter is saying invasive plants aren’t evil, suggesting that there’s nothing bad about them and that they don’t cause biodiversity loss, at least in the short term on a geologic scale. The bigger picture is that in America there is becoming increasingly less natural space and that homes full of plants from overseas, support very little leaf eating insects, which means animals that eat those insects have less to eat, animals that eat those animals will have less to eat etc, which will cause a large amount of biodiversity loss. Life will go on and certain species will adapt fast enough, but many won’t if we have yards full of invasives. I’m sure you already understand that, and I know you said listen to tallamy…but the average person reading your comment might only take in the “invasives aren’t evil” part that you spent the most time on.