INVASIVE PLANTS: These plants are like guests that make 
pests of themselves. Details ahead on Passport to Texas
____________________________________________________________

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Fall is a fantastic time to renew your landscape, but be 
careful what you plant. 

A lot of times we'll go into the businesses [garden center], and 
we see a plant that's labeled 'well-adapted'. Well, a lot of those 
well-adapted plants are actually highly invasive in our Texas 
environment. There's a movement afoot to do something about 
it - to cut down on their use :09

Mark Klym oversees the wildscape program at Texas 
Parks and Wildlife. He says well-adapted, yet invasive 
species create problems.

Those plants include things like privet, red-tipped photinia, 
ligustrum, pyrocantha. :05

While these species may show up in bird books as ideal 
plants to use in bird attracting garden ... 

Be careful with them. They are highly invasive; all across the US 
people are complaining about them in the landscape because 
they create a monoculture out there, and eliminate a lot of our 
native plants. And without our native plants, we could lose a lot 
of our native wildlife. :12

The Texas Parks and Wildlife website has a native plant 
database where you can find plants for your landscape 
that will benefit wildlife.

Just because it does look great in a landscape, and you do see a 
couple of birds sitting on them - I got one of my favorite 
pictures of a Costas Hummingbird sitting in privet down in 
Rockport - but, that doesn't mean that's a good plant for us to 
use in our garden. :11

That's our show for today ... For Texas Parks and 
Wildlife ... I'm Cecilia Nasti.