A native plant (or exotic, depending on who you ask), Virginia creeper, theoretically, provides food for birds in winter. It is also known to be, “overly vigorous,” when it receives excessive watering—or, it turns into a wet year.
For that very reason, I must regrettably report that this summer the client asked me to remove a large patch of it that was choking out other locally native plants. It’s a tough decision but they made it because the balance no longer leaned towards species diversity.
With Virginia creeper, the problem is its voraciousness. Or, the problem is us and houses, but you can’t tell that to the man who pays the bills…
Especially in wet and rainy years, Virginia creeper will expand its solar footprint to excess, working its way up and through to outcompete other beneficial plants.
Poisonous to humans and pets, but important to birds that eat berries, yet if we remove the Virginia creeper and leave behind the Apache plume, scrub oak, and (yes, even the) Russian sage, we remove a plant that will always try to take more than its fair share and take it first (as defined on any scale other than its own) and expands its solar footprint till it consumes all resources.
Does Virginia creeper really act with such salacious selfishness? Not at all. Ironic to say, maybe, but only in the framework of everyone else’s needs should we consider it a selfish plant.
Beyond birds, it offers habitat and home for additional populations of native insects. Which means even as it chokes out native plants and trees, it is providing space for some of our most threatened ecological niches to gain additional resiliency (insects—not mice).
This is all, of course, speculation, educated guesswork, and good ol’ fashioned field observation mixed with healthy doses of colonial privilege, anecdotal assumption, and reasonably serious research. Virginia creeper is actually a beneficial plant because it provides habitat for snakes and food for birds but is that statement true if we examine the vine’s impact on Apache plume and rabbit brush’s growth rate?
We need to check this perspective and be clear it’s totally human centric. Even then, if we’re discussing perspectives in which we say randomly something like, “plants are altruistic,” or even, “plants are selfish,” it is often framed in context of evolutionary advantage.
And if that’s the case then it’s not really altruism.
Can plants actually be altruistic? Let’s say not, because the power exchange within the ecosystem is usually not self balancing…but if we look at the larger system as a whole, individual players within the ecology only behave in ways that are tangential to altruistic action. If they can’t be altruistic themselves can the larger system still transmute selfishness into a more common currency?
This leads to questions: is it helpful to anthropomorphize intangibles like “ecosystem,” or even the broader concept of “nature”? Can the larger system work altruistically if the individual is always motivated by self interest?
Maybe best if we never know…but, if you’re looking for answers, best ask the Virginia creeper, or my bank account.