The invasive plants that provide no food for American insects and animals include: Japanese honeysuckle, autumn olive, multiflora roses, butterfly bush, privet and lilacs (China), Siberian elm, bachelor button, lantana, mulberry etc.

Tallamy says they are pretty but may as well be plastic as far as their habitat support is concerned. Adult insects can use the nectar but cannot raise families on these plants because their stomachs are not adapted to digesting their leaves.

The plants that are native to their land such as dogwood, cherry, oak, arrowwood Viburnum, goldenrod, Joe-pye weed, black-eyed Susan can thrive when the imported and exotic plants are cut back. Without those native plants, American birds cannot feed their young. Tallamy says that the more appealing garden hybrids of American native plants serve nature just as well as their parents.

Tallamy does not recommend that homeowners remove their prized plants from China, Japan, Europe and South America. He urges us use our gardens to create “a grassroots solution to the extinction crisis.”

If every gardener planted one native plant each year, we could collectively stop the starving and extinction of native insects and birds due to the loss of habitat and food to raise their young.

“As gardeners and stewards of our land, we have never been so empowered — and the ecological stakes have never been so high,” Tallamy says.

“Bringing Nature Home” by Doug Tallamy, published 2007 by Timber Press, $27.95.

If you go

WHAT: Tulsa Audubon Society Wildlife Habitat Tour of Home Gardens and Plant Sale.

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

MAP AND LOCATIONS: www.tulsaaudubon.org.

INFORMATION: caroleames@intcon.net and 446-2720.