[APWG] Whole continent missing its native understory, and needs restoration

[Craig Dremann]

Dear Marc and All,

Thanks for your email.  

On the East Coast, as I stated before, when I surveyed the Washington DC
to Dover Delaware corridor, I was shocked to see that the native
understory of perennial grasses and perennial herbaceous plants were 
95% exterminated, probably between 1750 and 1850.

No where within that corridor,  did I see even one continuous acre of
perennial native grassland, and the only one good spot (less than an
acre) was at the edge of the Great Falls in Maryland.  This amount of
devistation of the native plant understory within an ecosystem is almost
to the degree that we have out here in lower-elevation California
(<3,000 feet), which is 99.999% gone.  

When any of us are out working, either on weed management activities, or
ecological restoration, perhaps we should look around to see if native
plant families are missing from the ecosystem---like the grass family,
the lily family, the bean family, the mint family, the carrot family,
etc.--- these plants were were such yummy cow-chow and sheep-chow, and
in 2005, they should all be growing in the spots where the exotics grow
today.

Perhaps one of the problems with exotics in both the East and the West,
is that the exotics have become "niche-fillers", moving into these
vacancies left when whole native plant families were removed from the
ecosystems?  

Sure, there's plenty of native trees and shrubs in the East but the
forest grasses and herbaceous plants were mostly exterminated 150-200
years ago, before the advent of the automobile.

Since my Washington DC-Delaware survey, I have had an opportunity to
survey some of the Southern States---Georgia south of Atlanta, Central
to coastal North Carolina, central Alabama and southern Tennessee in
2003-2005.  I generally found more relic stands of native perennial
grasses and herbaceous perennials than in the East, including a few
spots that were one contiguous acre or more.  

However, I'd say that even the Southern states that are in better shape
than the East, that their native understories are still 85% hosed.

Perhaps we need to make a State-by-State continent-wide mapping of the
native understories for each State, and hopefully the mappers will also
have some money in hand to purchase land whenever we find those
extremely rare acres that contains some of the original ecosystem, like
the pictures you can see at http://www.ecoseeds.com/wild.html ?

And my original proposition still stands: That in both the East and the
West, we have to move from exotic terrestrial plant management, to
ecological restoration of the original native ecosystems, with special
attention to restoring  the native understories that have been largly
exterminated in the last 200 years, continent-wide.  

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, Redwood City, CA. (650) 325-7333