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When we moved to our home 20 years ago our yard looked like all the other yards in my upscale neighborhood centered by a lawn and surrounded with standard Southern non-native ornamentals such as crepe myrtles, hydrangeas, gardenias, and camelias along with nursery grown invasives including English ivy, periwinkle, liriope, and nandina.
We were new to the Deep South so before adding new garden beds, shrubs and trees we had a Southern landscape designer tell us what we had growing in our yard. There was a young tree bordering the back of our property and when I asked him what it was he scoffed and dismissed it as a “trash tree” although he didn’t identify it. I had never heard the term and didn't see any reason to remove the tree, so it stayed.
Later that year our neighbors replaced the chain link fence dividing our property when they clearcut most of their backyard to create an adult playground centered around a pool and thumpingly loud sound system. They left a few trees at the edges. Since our “trash tree” also bordered the back corner of both yards they asked if we wanted the fence to be built to have the tree on our side or theirs. All my energies were directed at raising my young children at the time and I wasn't in a place of thinking about the implications of losing the habitat value of a few feet in my small, urban yard and said it didn’t matter. I regret making that decision because my tree and that precious 2-3 feet strip of my property has been destroyed by mow and blow crews and other destructive landscape practices on their side for 18 years now. The lots behind us don’t align with ours so there are two yards along our back fence and the once small tree now towers over three yards. I’m worried that there will one day be a conflict around this tree. One of the neighbors has already taken off a large limb and I just hope the roots in my yard are nourishing the tree enough to keep it alive.
A trash or junk tree is a pejorative landscape term meaning a tree is somehow useless and messy to people - it might have fruit that stains manmade surfaces; seed prolifically; attract a large variety and number of insects; have a growing habit that is not pleasing to the eye; or drop twigs, branches and limbs. Trash and junk are human concepts because nature is not wasteful. Fruit doesn’t stain natural areas and is eventually eaten or decomposes; seeding prolifically ensures the survival of a plant species; insects are foundational to the ecosystem; the growing habitat of a tree is a functional adaptation; and dropping branches is a way for trees to self-prune for self-preservation. Subjective language like calling a plant trash also contributes to the confusion around native plants and invasive plants by lumping invasives that harm the ecosystem like Bradford pears with native plants such as the much maligned native hackberry that has coevolved to support the local wildlife. (video of a flock or "earful" of cedar waxwings in my native hackberry tree)
Our own backyard had been flattened and relandscaped by the previous owners so there were only a few trees including the “trash tree” which turned out to be a native sugarberry tree/Celtis laevigata, often called hackberry. Lucky me because it’s such a fantastic habitat support tree and definitely not trash! Hackberries do reseed generously, but the seedlings are easily pulled. I don’t worry at all about this because I import at least a hundred bags of fallen leaves to blanket the open areas of my yard. Some day when all the trees I’ve planted mature they will take over the task. (Video is from an outing scavenging for leaf bags in my neighborhood)
The twigs and branches the hackberry sheds when its windy nutrient cycle back to the earth in my rewilded yard along with all the other valuable natural matter such as acorns, pinecones, galls, and leaves.
Hackberries are another example of how ornamental horticulture contributes to the ongoing invasive species crisis. Despite North America having a handful of native hackberry species, the nursery industry imported Chinese hackberry (Celtis sinensis) to North America and in the process introduced the invasive Asian wooly hackberry aphid to native hackberries in Georgia in the 1990s. The black sooty mold that develops on the honeydew these aphids produce covers surfaces beneath the tree for about a month before the first frost. It’s unsightly but doesn’t harm the tree or anything growing beneath it. Tom Arnold in the Edisto Island Open Land Trust even suggests that insects such as the hackberry aphid might attract fall migrating birds such as warblers and vireos.
The invasive aphids are here to stay, but the reaction people have to the sooty mold from the aphids unfortunately has a cascading effect on reducing the number of hackberries used in public spaces; contributes to established hackberries being taken down; and increases the use of environmentally devastating neonicotinoid pesticides being used in a misguide effort to systemically treat hackberries for aphids - an action that doesn't get rid of the aphids but does impact biodiversity by reducing the insect rich habitat value of the hackberries for birds and other wildlife.
Celtis laevigata is called hackberry, Southern hackberry or sugarberry and Celtis occodentalis is called hackberry, Northern hackberry or beaverwood. The common name can be confusing because both species are called hackberry, can hybridize, and overlap geographically. No matter which one you have, there's no doubt about hackberry's ecological benefits
Hackberries host 46 species of butterflies and moths (in metro Atlanta) according to the National Wildlife Federation site ranking native plants by this metric. Some fantastical butterflies using hackberry as a host tree include the Hackberry emperor, American snout, Mourning cloak, and Question mark.
My hackberry is stripped of fruit (called drupes) by early winter. It’s particularly popular with migrating flocks of cedar waxwings and winter birds including flocks of robins.
Just this week I was thrilled when I saw a lone Baltimore oriole spend the morning eating hackberries and sipping from my wildlife container pond. This was the very first Baltimore oriole I've ever seen and she seemed to be travelling with the large flock of red-winged blackbirds who visit my yard every day.
Galls are pieces of plant tissue that have been modified by the activity of another organism such as insects, viruses, wasps, or aphids. Oaks have the greatest number of galls, but hackberries are also popular gall trees. Galls are all over a tiny hackberry sapling I’m letting grow in my front yard to step in on the day my beloved 120-year-old tulip tree (Liriodendron) might no longer be there. The larger hackberry tree in the the backyard is undoubtedly also covered with galls even though the branches are too high for me to see them. Birds such as tufted titmice and white breasted nuthatches eat the insects in the galls. (Video of hackberry galls on my front yard hackberry sapling)
Hackberries are common host trees for mistletoe which is a native keystone species and important to the healthy functioning of the ecosystem where it grows.
Squirrels hold a special place in my yard as the most common wildlife ambassadors and can find food, cover, shelter, and nesting sites in my hackberry tree. It’s an essential part of the squirrel super highway of trees and fences along neighboring property lines.
Hackberries are an early successional tree so they are fast growing, resilient, and need little maintenance to grow 40-80 feet tall depending on multiple factors. They like to grow where there is moisture and sun, but are fairly adaptable and resilient (great qualities for urban and suburban trees!). My hackberry has done just fine in a dry, partially shady site. Hackberries have long horizontal branches that tend to drop as they mature - which just means they're not a great tree to plant near a manmade structure like a home or garage but are fine in more natural parts of a yard. The bark is extraordinary as the tree matures because it starts to look like cork.
I’m glad I didn’t listen to the landscape designer and instead let my “trash tree” stay all those years ago – the benefit it's been offering my yard’s ecosystem far outweighs any perceived drawbacks. Hackberries seem to be having a moment centered in Nashville where Joanna Brichetto a hometown nature writer has an IG account called Hackberry Appreciation Society and mentions them multiple times in her new book This is How a Robin Drinks; Michael Davie of the Nashville Tree Conservation Corps writes glowingly about hackberries; and naturalist Margaret Renkl who also lives in Nashville profiled hackberries in a recent New York Time's opinion piece. I rarely see hackberries around my intown Atlanta neighborhood and the only time they're mentioned is in online neighborhood rants about them, so we really can't have enough hackberry PR.
This winter or early next spring is a perfect time to join the hackberry fan club by adding one to your yard for future generations if they naturally grow where you live (BONAP can help with this information). Hackberries can support habitat for up to 200 years but in more managed areas typically only live a fraction of this time. Turn up the volume in the vidoe below for a glimps into the life giving joy that a typical hackberry can create for generations of birds (this is a flock of robins having a hackberry party).
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