Privet Explorations

I'm a retired professional gardener living in a post-horticultural world. I have the luxury of wandering Halibut Point State Park free of caretaking responsibilities or concerns. I'm grateful that the paths and vistas are kept open but in regard to plant ecology I'm a minimalist, a cheerful libertarian. I favor curiosity over intervention.

A privet hedge gone au naturel

Once upon a time privets were planted near the Park Visitors' Center in the usage we all recognize, a straight-line hedge serving some architectural purpose. Privets respond to hard shearing by greening out obligingly into fine-textured garden walls. People who have never enjoyed their natural tree-like  form can start by admiring this group at Halibut Point.



A naturalized privet in bloom

One way or another privets have spread throughout the Park as plants re-colonized the pasture lands and quarry zones. They have been successful competitors in a free-for-all.

A bee pollinating privet flowers

They produce a multitude of flowers that perfume the Park in early summer, attracting pollinators in exchange for nourishing nectar. The pleasure or offense of this fragrance draws mixed reviews from human noses. For myself it's an emblematic scent extending the equally controversial odor of Rosa multiflora that bloomed prolifically just before the privets. I appreciate it as a phenomenon, one of the distinctive smells in the seasonal succession.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail in privet service and reward

Comparing the relative length of the flower tube to that of the decurved petals provides the only sure way of distinguishing these Border Privets Ligustrum obtusifolium of Eastern Asian origin, from Common Privet Ligustrum vulgare of European origin. Both were widely planted in American landscapes and have escaped robustly enough to draw scrutiny as 'likely invasive' species in the Northeast. The more tender but vigorous Chinese privet Ligustrum sinense merits no such equivocation in the Southern States where it is regarded as a rampant scourge.

Privet berries

The berries that result from the flowers offer only modest ornamentation to our summer eyes. They are small, black and recessive in the demure manner of the white flowers.

Privet in snow

However they persist on the branchlets into winter as a conspicuous novelty after other fruits have disappeared.

Cedar Waxwings harvesting privet berries in winter

Repeated frosts increase the fructose content of privet berries, soften the pulp, and make them more palatable to birds as winter progresses. The berries sustain Robins and Cedar Waxwings that might not otherwise survive in our latitude.

The birds are the privet's principal agents of seed dispersal in a symbiotic equation. They are changing the countryside as their individual needs and abilities find fulfillment in the other. Following on opportunities from human reconfigurations of the land they push toward a new order that sweeps in with fresh considerations for our concept of beauty.