Forum home Wildlife gardening
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Are Non-native plants a cause of the decreasing biodiversity?

123468

Posts

  • It matters because it means Lonicera Japonica may not be a threat anymore, meaning people can grow it down here without worries about it being banned or doing any damage. 
  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    Doesn't answer my question, is it naturalised in Southern England now?
    No is the simple answer. I've lived in southern England for 40 years and I have NEVER seen one outside a garden setting. 
    You're sounding more than a little fixated/ paranoid. 
    Where is your evidence that it IS a problem?
    Devon.
  • Hostafan1 said:
    Doesn't answer my question, is it naturalised in Southern England now?
    No is the simple answer. I've lived in southern England for 40 years and I have NEVER seen one outside a garden setting. 
    You're sounding more than a little fixated/ paranoid. 
    Where is your evidence that it IS a problem?
    I've seen it get out in a load of places, the village where I live, in towns where I visit regularly, I see huge clumps of it in places which aren't cared for and in hedgerows. I'm guessing that it might be naturalised at this point as that much of it means it must be in large amounts elsewhere, it is a nice plant so if it is naturalised that is great.
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    Himalayan honeysuckle another non native honeysuckle loved by pollinators, berry eaters and me.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • Here is the nature website where I saw the claim of it being naturalised: https://www.naturespot.org.uk/species/japanese-honeysuckle

    (I see it quite a bit from a 15-mile radius from my house so it seems pretty plausible, at least to me.)
  • Awesome, I really like it so hopefully I'm not doing a disservice to nature. I rarely see our native one except in woodlands so it could be really good for pollinators outside of the woods. Also, the flowers are edible and it smells fantastic so it is a pretty nice plant to have.
  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,618
    edited September 2023
    Blame the chopping down of mature trees to enable building new houses at any cost.     300 tonnes of wood was taken out next to me to squeeze 38 houses in.  More hedgerow was ripped out (of TPO woodland)the day of the Kings Coronation to give an adequate visual splay as the one that was approved  was later found to be inadequate.  We lost three quarters of the birds. The Deer that has visited us for three years was found dead a mile away. I haven't seen a hedgehog this year. Bat roosts  were destroyed  with the consent of the local council when the  old house on the site was pulled down.  The balance in my garden has gone haywire, insect pests have  proliferated as there are less birds to keep them under control.  Biodiversity has plummeted  despite all the lip service the councillors spout  about looking after the wildlife.
  • That is incredibly sad. I'm on a relatively new housing estate and some of the nature still remains. We regularly see bats, sometimes stags and also shrews wandering around in the daytime (where I live used to be a farm field). We still have quite a bit of our birds somehow, there are a lot more cats here than there were so I was wondering whether that may affect it. The caterpillars destroyed my cabbage this year but all of a sudden all of them were gone, so I'm guessing birds had them. 
  • More likely the caterpillars pupated. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,618
    One thing that has proliferated this year has been Box Tree moth and oak Processionary Moth. The box tree moths I drown. The Oak processionary moths, the Forestry commission came and  vacuumed off two nests, I caught 15  adult moths in a light trap last month. (frozen then went off to be checked) Both alien invaders bought in on plants imported from the continent. As OPM  only eats oaks, I am at a loss as to why we import Oaks from the continent when they grow from acorns perfectly well here.  If the current outbreak in South Derbyshire gets up to Sherwood Forest, its stuffed.
Sign In or Register to comment.