When native plants die…

As readers and writers of this blog, we know that we should plant as many natives as possible for many reasons. Some important reasons are: to reduce the need for extra irrigation, to better support native wildlife, and to create landscapes that are authentic for our regions. But this is not the end of the story…

Native plant nurseries do their best to present beautiful natives to attract buyers. Thanks to Renee Stambaugh for her attractive garden fest display.

Within one year, many of these lovely native plants will be dead!

Ferns in the landscape

Ferns create a soft edge between a wooded area and a lawn. Here you see a mixture of netted chain ferns and cinnamon ferns along with magnolia, St. Johnswort, sweet gum, and more.

Ferns are Living Fossils

Ferns belong to the Pteridophyta Division of the plant kingdom in that they have leaves, roots and stems, but since they spread by spores, ferns do not have flowers, pollen, fruits, or seeds. Today's ferns descended from ancient plants that covered the earth long before the seed plants (the gymnosperms and angiosperms) made their appearance.

Plants have hormones, too

A topped magnolia (M. grandiflora) has produced
several side branches after the terminal bud was cut.
Don't buy this tree!

Auxins

The terminal buds of plant stems contain hormones (auxins) that suppress the side shoots from sprouting and also encourage root growth. You’ve probably noticed the result of this hormone when you cut off a shoot: one or two new shoots will grow from the next nodes that were just buds before.

The auxins also help with rooting, so much so, that commercial rooting hormone is a mixture of auxins. We all want our plants to survive and prosper, so here’s what you need to know about these plant hormones.

Don’t buy this tree! 

The magnolia is bushy, but an untopped tree with one true leader (and all its auxins) will be much stronger and will not need corrective pruning to choose a new leader. Also the presence of the terminal bud will encourage faster root formation after planting.

Natives Plants for Your Yard: the Next Step

Grassleaf Barbara’s Buttons  (Marshallia graminifolia)
are beautiful Florida natives suitable for a fairy tale garden…

Is native gardening a fairy tale? 

Once upon a time, a gardener decided that she wanted more butterflies and more birds in her yard. She read books and oodles of online material and then she attended classes, conferences, workshops, and garden fests.

After all this education, she found that she really could make a big difference by installing native plants that attract butterflies and birds with their berries and delicious leaves that caterpillars would eat. As a bonus her landscape would be easy to care for since native plants have lived in the wild for eons with no care at all.

After a great quest* far and wide across her realm, she found a local native plant nursery that had the native plants she wanted. She paid the small bounty for the plants and brought them home and everyone (and every bird and butterfly) lived happily ever after.

NOT!!

“Things” are more complex than than a fairy tale.

The Science Behind our Commitment to Native Plants

Luna moth (© B. Moisset)

Don’t you get tired when you hear words like: “nativistic mania”, “simplistic assumptions”, “nostalgic”, and “sentimental notions”? Not to mention the stronger ones: “native-plant fundamentalist”, “xenophobia”, “native plant Nazi”?

Introduced Plants Secret Weapon: Non-native Pests

Japanese beetles on milkweed
This nasty pest came to us courtesy of an innocent and beautiful Japanese iris
© Beatriz Moisset

Introduced plants have a dark side that we often ignore. I am not talking about plants that become invasive, but about some of the well behaved ones, the ones that never leave your garden or the park where they were first planted. Some plants bring a living cargo to this land and this cargo may turn out to be worse than we can imagine.