While rabbits (Sylvilagus and Lepus species) are an important part of the Central Arizona ecosystem, their presence is often unwelcome to gardeners due to their propensity to destroy or consume plants. As the diets of these animals change with wild food availability, yearly precipitation, and temperature variations, it can be difficult to predict which plants will be appealing for consumption. Additionally, plants may be more desirable when they are young and/or well fertilized. Due to this variability, instead of creating a straightforward list of plants in which herbivory is described in a “yes” or “no” fashion, a survey of both the existing literature on the subject and first-hand community experience was conducted. The results from that survey are presented in this publication as a percentage of those responses, which may be used to infer probability of herbivory.
Some products and home remedies purport to repel and/or discourage rabbits, but the surest solution is to exclude wildlife from your garden using properly designed fences. Read az1855 for information on fencing design.
Data were collected from multiple sources (websites, social media and surveys), many of which also reported data from their own sources, though only tallied as a single response. The goal was to obtain herbivory data from previous research on rabbit and from Arizona residents and businesses with direct experience with the animals. “n” represents the number of data sources (see sources) who provided input; the larger the n value, generally the greater our confidence in the reported probability of damage, though as stated earlier, a single source could be an aggregate of several. Because animal behavior can vary based on several variables such as temperature and rainfall, these plant data have been categorized as “never to rarely damaged”, “sometimes damaged” or “frequently damaged”, with percentages based on the number of responses/sources for each plant.
Learn more about plant resistance ratings by reading other articles in the Arizona Highlands Plant Herbovorys series.