Aliens in the Backyard

Plant and Animal Imports into America

John Leland

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781570039584, 9781570035821
• eBook ISBN: 9781611172133
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Foreword INDIES 2005 Popular Culture Book of the Year

A fresh look at the origins of our iconic immigrant flora and fauna, revealed with wit and reverence for nature

Aliens live among us. Thousands of species of nonnative flora and fauna have taken up residence within U.S. borders. Our lawns sprout African grasses, our roadsides flower with European weeds, and our homes harbor Asian, European, and African pests. Misguided enthusiasts deliberately introduced carp, kudzu, and starlings. And the American cowboy spread such alien life forms as cows, horses, tumbleweed, and anthrax, supplanting and supplementing the often unexpected ways "Native" Americans influenced the environment. Aliens in the Backyard recounts the origins and impacts of these and other nonindigenous species on our environment and pays overdue tribute to the resolve of nature to survive in the face of challenge and change.

In considering the new home that imported species have made for themselves on the continent, John Leland departs from those environmentalists who universally decry the invasion of outsiders. Instead Leland finds that uncovering stories of alien arrivals and assimilation is a more intriguing—and ultimately more beneficial—endeavor. Mixing natural history with engaging anecdotes, Leland cuts through problematic myths coloring our grasp of the natural world and suggests that how these alien species have reshaped our landscape is now as much a part of our shared heritage as tales of our presidents and politics. Simultaneously he poses questions about which of our accepted icons are truly American (not apple pie or Kentucky bluegrass; not Idaho potatoes or Boston ivy). Leland's ode to survival reveals how plant and animal immigrants have made the country as much an environmental melting pot as its famed melding of human cultures, and he invites us to reconsider what it means to be American.

Notes

As American as Apple Pie

1. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Harmful Non-Indigenous Species in the United States, OTA-F-565 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1993), 53.

Out of Africa

1. L. Holm, J. V. Pancho, J. P. Herberger, and D. L. Plucknett, A Geographical Atlas of World Weeds, in handout from Hybrid Bermudagrass Spriggers Workshop meeting, ed. G. W. Burton (Tifton, Ga: Rural Development Center, 1992).

2. M. E. Francis, The Book of Grasses (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1912).

3. G. W. Burton, “Bermudagrass,” in Forages, 2d ed., ed. H. D. Hughes, M. E. Heath, and D. Metcalfe (Ames: Iowa State College Press, 1951), 270, cited in Carl H. Hover-male and Greg Cuomo, Bermudagrass Variety Evaluations in South Mississippi, Bulletin 1059 (Starkville, Miss.: Office of Agricultural Communications, Mississippi State University), http://msucares.com/pubs/bulletins/b1059.htm (accessed March 11, 2003). Spalding’s diary supposedly dates Ellis’s introduction to 1751, although Ellis wasn’t made royal governor of Georgia until 1757.

4. Duncan, quoted in Janet I. Rodekohr, “The Beauty of Tough Turf,” University of Georgia Research Magazine 29 (Summer 2000).

5. Charles V. Piper, Forage Plants and Their Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1914), 244.

6. Lyman Carrier, The Beginnings of Agriculture in America (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1923), 251.

7. Mitich, “Colonel Johnson’s Grass: Johnson.”

8. Victor R. Boswell, “Our Vegetable Travelers,” National Geographic 96 (August 1949): 194.

9. David Rhodes, outline course material for Horticulture 410, “Okra–HORT410–Vegetable Crops,” Purdue University, http://www.hort.purdue.edu/rhodcv/hort410/okra/okra.htm; Agricultural Marketing Service, “USDA Revises Grading Standards for Frozen Okra,” news release, September 27, 1999, http://www.ams.usda.gov/news/252c.htm (accessed February 26, 2004).

10. Eric P. Prostko, Enrique Rosales-Robles, and James M. Chandler, “Wild Okra Control with Bromoxynil and Pyrithiobac,” Journal of Cotton Science 2 (1998): 100–103, 100.

11. David Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (Project Gutenberg, 1997), chap. 2, http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext97/mtrav10.txt (accessed March 10, 2003).

12. Native Seeds, catalog listing, http://www.nativeseeds.org (information for Watermelon; accessed March 10, 2003); U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Resources Conservation Service, Plants Database, http://plants.usda.gov (information for Citrullus lanatus; accessed March 10, 2003).

13. Purdue University Center for New Crops and Plant Products, New Crops Resource Online Program, “Sesame” (factsheet, http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/med-aro/factsheets/SESAME.html; accessed March 10, 2003).

14. Francis Porcher, Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, Medical, Economical, and Agricultural. Being also a Medical Botany of the Confederate States; with Practical Information on the Useful Properties of the Trees, Plants, and Shrubs (Charleston, S.C.: Evans and Cogswell, 1863), 194–95.

15. Lewis Gray and Esther Thompson, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to I860, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1933), 194.

16. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Crop Profile for Sesame in United States,” April 2000, online at http://cipm.ncsu.edu/cropprofiles/
docs/ussesame.html#N_3_ (accessed March 10, 2003).

17. Raleigh H. Merritt, From Captivity to Fame; or, Life of George Washington Carver (Boston: Meador, 1929), 162; Herbert Myrick, The Book of Corn (New York: Orange Judd, 1903), 168; Matt. 13: 24–30.

18. Carrier, The Beginnings of Agriculture, 250.

19. USDA, NRCS, Plants Database (information for Vigna unguiculata; accessed March 11, 2003).

20. L. H. Bailey, Cyclopedia of American Agriculture: A Popular Survey of Agricultural Conditions, Practices and Ideals in the United States and Canada, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1909), 266.

21. Texas Department of Transportation, “The History of the Black-Eyed Pea” (excerpts from Texas Highways Magazine, July 1994), http://www.athenstx.org/History.htm (accessed March 11, 2003).

22. International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, “Cowpea,” http://www.iita.org/crop/cowpea.htm (accessed March 11, 2003).

23. University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program Online Cover Crop Database, http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/cgi-bin/CCrop.exe (information for cowpea; accessed March 11, 2003).

24. James A. Duke, Handbook of Energy Crops (West Lafayette, Ind.: Center for New Crops and Plants Products, Purdue University, 1983), e-book only, http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/dukeindex.html (information for Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp. ssp. Unguiculata; accessed March 11, 2003); Boswell, “Our Vegetable Travelers.”

25. K. O. Rachie and R. T. Wurster, “The Potential of Pigeon Pea (Cajanus cajan Millsp) as a Horticultural Crop in East Africa,” Acta Horticulturae (ISHS) 21 (1971): 172–78, http://www.actahort.org/books/21/21_28.htm (accessed March 11, 2003).

26. Karen Hess, The Carolina Rice Kitchen (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992), 99.

27. Duke, Handbook of Energy Crops, n.p.

28. “Traditional Food: What Zimbabweans Eat,” Zimbabwe Magazine (February 2000), http://www.zimbabwebiz.com/zimbiz/magazine/02–2000/feb01.htm (accessed March 11, 2003).

A Green Nightmare

1. Figures taken from Garden Club of America, “The New American Lawn,” http://www.gcamerica.org/pamphlets/lawnbrochure.html; Smaller American La...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• As American as Apple Pie: An Introduction to Weeds
• Out of Africa: How Slavery Transformed the American Landscape and Diet
• A Green Nightmare: The Un-American Lawn
• A Sow’s Ear from a Silk Purse: The Legacy of Sericulture
• Psychedelic Gardens: What Grandmother Grew in Her Backyard
• Bad Air and Worse Science: Malaria’s Gifts to America
• Bioterror: Older Than You Think
• Cowboys: And Their Alien Habits
• . . . and Indians: Less Native Than You Think
• An Entangled Bank: Roadside Weeds
• House Pests: Some of Those Who Share Your Quarters
• It Seemed a Good Idea at the Time: The Well-Intentioned Ecological Disaster
• Misplaced Americans: As Rootless as the Humans Who Invited Them In
• Gone Fishin’: An Unnatural Pastime
• Notes
• Index