Caner CIFTCI / Getty Images Common Names: Common hackberry, sugarberry, nettle tree, beaverwood, northern hackberry. Habitat: On good bottomland soils, it grows fast and may live to 20 years.

The migrators need to fatten up for their long journey. The hackberry is the host plant for dozens of lepidoptera species: 49 here in Middle Tennessee, according to Ms. Brichetto.

Although Pliny called hackberry “the lotus with sweet berries,” the fruit is actually a drupe (fleshy fruit with a single seed), not a berry. Humans have eaten fruits from various hackberry ...