Architects, and sometimes even landscape architects, are often guilty of treating the landscapes around our homes and businesses like a decorative garnish, a foundation fringe, or as Felder Rushing likes to say, “the parsley on the pig.”

When we change our perspective to recognize the plants and soil as part of a living system that supports us, their design becomes a vital part of the function and experience of a place.

Trees provide many things – beauty, shade, water filtration, and more – but they can also give you a window into another world, the world of birds and butterflies, moths, and a whole host of fascinating critters right outside your window. Here’s a quick guide to our favorite native trees for landscaping.

Red Buckeye

Showy red flowers (pictured above) provide a great source of nectar for hummingbirds in the spring. The red buckeye is a host plant for 37 species of butterflies and moth larvae, including the four-spotted angle moth, buckeye pinion, imperial moth, and polyphemus moth. Visitors include long-horned beetles and leafhoppers.

Caution: the dry, hard fruits are toxic to humans and animals.

Chinquapin Oak

A large shade tree that supports a wide variety of wildlife species, the chinquapin oak is a super host! Bees and hummingbirds are attracted to the flowers. Almost a dozen butterflies and moths use it as a larval host. Finches, sparrows, cardinals, and titmice eat the insects attracted to the tree, and deer, blue jays, woodpeckers, flickers, wild turkeys, squirrels, and other animals eat the acorns.

Many butterflies and moths that use chinquapin oak as a host plant:

Banded hairstreak (Satyrium calanus)
Edward’s hairstreak (Satyrium edwardsii)
Gray hairstreak (Strymon melinus)
White-m hairstreak (Parrhasius malbum)
Horace’s duskywing (Erynnis horatius)
Juvenalis duskywing (Erynnis juvenalis)
Rosy maple moth
Interrupted dagger moth
Royal walnut moth

Redbud

This beautiful understory tree has bright flowers that announce the arrival of spring. This makes them an important food source for early-season pollinators and hummingbirds. Redbuds will help bring butterflies, bees, moths, and birds to your yard.

While the only butterfly known to use the redbud as a host plant is Henry's elfin, a 7/8- to 1 1/8-inch grayish-brown butterfly, the redbud is the host of a small number of moths, including the strikingly beautiful lo moth.

The seeds of redbud trees are eaten by some birds, including the Northern cardinal. The flowers are edible and can be eaten fresh, pickled, or fried. They can even be used to make jelly!

Black Gum

A large tree with showy fall color, the black gum thrives in moist woodlands or areas with occasional flooding and are well suited for use in a rain garden.

The blue-black fruit this tree produces is sought out by various songbirds, turkey, and deer. The flowers are valuable to bees and other pollinators in the spring. Hollow trunks provide nesting or refuge areas for many animals.

Bald cypress. Credit: Larry D. Moore via Wikimedia Commons

Pond Cypress and Bald Cypress

These trees are nature’s water filters – they remove pollutants from water by trapping sediment and absorbing nutrients, contributing to cleaner water bodies. Their roots also help prevent erosion and stabilize shoreline and wetland areas. Cypress branches provide sheltered roosting sites for many different types of birds.

Sweetbay Magnolia

This smaller tree is a late bloomer, with vanilla-scented flowers followed by beautiful red seeds that fuel the journey of many migratory birds in the fall. They are a larval host for the beautiful eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly as well as the showy sweetbay silkmoth.

Shagbark Hickory

A large but slow-growing and long-lived tree with beautiful textural bark, hickories are members of the walnut family, and their fruit (a nut) is highly prized by both humans and wildlife. Foxes, mice, chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and a number of birds enjoy the nuts every fall.

However, shagbark hickories don’t reach maturity and start producing seeds until around 40 years old, so you truly are planting a tree for future generations to enjoy. The average lifespan is 200 years, but some longer-lived shagbarks can continue to produce seeds until age 300!

Shumard Oak

A large and relatively fast-growing tree with elegant form, the Shumard oak is also highly adaptable to urban soil conditions including compacted soils, heavy clay, dry soils, and occasional flooding. You just need to give it space and sun to thrive.

It has beautiful scarlet and burgundy fall color, and the nuts are highly prized by birds and mammals alike. Like other oaks, it serves as a host plant for many butterflies, including the banded hairstreak and Horace’s duskywing.

American Snowbell

A small tree with showy, sweet-smelling white flowers, the American snowbell likes wet soils and is another great choice for a rain garden, wetland or the edge of a stream or pond. The flowers attract pollinators like butterflies, bees, and moths, and the snowbell is a host plant for the beautiful promethea silkmoth.

Willow Oak

A medium to large oak with a growth habit that’s more tall than spreading, the willow oak doesn’t take up quite as much real estate as a live oak. But that doesn’t stop it from producing an abundant buffet of acorns that are an important food source for all sorts of wildlife, including: waterfowl, wild turkey, blue jays, red-headed and red-bellied woodpeckers, flickers, grackles, crows, nuthatches, white-tailed deer, fox, and gray squirrels, just to name a few!

Willow oaks also serve as a larval host for several butterflies and moths, and the walkingstick insect – a master of disguise!

Native Trees that Attract Birds, Butterflies, and More

Architects, and sometimes even landscape architects, are often guilty of treating the landscapes around our homes and businesses like a decorative garnish, a foundation fringe, or as Felder Rushing likes to say, “the parsley on the pig.”

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