[PCA] natives

[Alison Krohn]

Thanks for starting up the discussion on landscaping with natives.  I've been busy plastering a strawbale building to store local ecotype seed and didn't jump in sooner.  I hesitate because I'm not a scientist.
 
Our culture has not only introduced alien species but we've also drastically altered some of the processes so important to native plant reproduction.  In the prairie states we've eliminated wildfires.  We've recently reintroduced controlled burns but I wonder how remnants have adjusted to the lack of fire over the last hundred years. Until recently the burns always took place in the spring unlike what I presume may have occurred prior to settlement: lightning strikes and intentional or unitentional fires set by native americans.   Floodplains have also undergone tremendous changes. 
Since I'm a potential seed grower in the midwest, I wonder about CRP "native" plantings.  Fortunately there are none near  my land but could you grow local ecotype bluestem within 100' of a CRP field full of 'Kaw' big bluestem? We've fragmented existing native populations so severely in corn country that I wonder where to draw that "local" ecotype line.  
Thanks to everyone pondering these issues.
ak

		
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