[PCA] Proposed definition for "Native Plant", a couple of refinements?

Craig Dremann craig at astreet.com
Fri Aug 25 15:22:01 CDT 2006


Dear Larry and All,

I think its really great, that after all these decades, we're having a
discussion on the definition of some plants that we thought we knew
well, but apparently never came to any widely agreed terms about.

If there are any Native American people on these List servers, I'd be
very interested in their take on this discussion, since we're talking,
in North America, about the dividing line between their plants and all
the other plants that have been brought here from elsewhere.
---------------------------------

Larry Morse"s definition:

"A native plant, within a specified geographical region of interest, is
a plant species (or other plant taxon) currently or historically present
there without direct or indirect human intervention."
----------------------------------

The term, "a specified geographical region of interest" may be too
broad, and doesn't relate or limit that plant to a specific ecosystem
that the plant is a member of, which I discuss in detail later on.

Also, "currently or historically present there without direct or
indirect human intervention" doesn't take into account the "native"
plants that were directly moved around North America by the original
inhabitants, like the California Walnut (Juglans hindsii) that was moved
from Santa Barbara about 400 miles north to be planted around creekside
village sites, like around Walnut Creek.   

To avoid the issue of Native American and pre-European interventions,
perhaps we need a separate "North American native plant" definition just
for North America, which could be "any plants that existed in North
America before 1492," 

However, the concept of a plant that is "native to North America", is
still too broad, and perhaps we need a much finer definition, perhaps a
"Local North American native plant" that is "a plant that existed in
North America within a local native ecosystem, before 1492".

It doesn't make sense to say that it's OK to use "native plants", say 
when replanting a local native ecosystem in a National Forest, unless we
have included some language saying in effect, or somehow indicating,
that "native plants" from the Alaska tundra are not the same as "native
plants" from the Florida Everglades?

However, the term "LOCAL" then gets into the discussion about how
"local" is "local" ???  

You can see some photos from a common garden genetic study of one
species of native grass, the ecotypes of California brome or Bromus
carinatus, from only a 30 miles radius from San Francisco, at 
http://www.ecoseeds.com/common.html

Check out the differences in the Marin County chert vs. the Marin County
serpentine, that were only 1,000 feet away from each other.

At some time in the future, maybe decades from now, when the term
"native plant" is defined to the satisfaction of all the government
agencies, then we absolutely MUST tackle the much, much more difficult
issue of the GENETICS and ECOTYPES of the native plants.

I was discussing this issue with Dr. Ledyard Stebbins almost 10 years
ago, while we were working on a few papers together.  Dr. Stebbins did
pioneering work on the genetics of our California native grasses 40-60
years ago, that you can see at http://www.ecoseeds.com/stebbins.html

We co-authored one paper in 1998, and even though taxonomically there
are about 300 native grasses currently described in California,
unfortunately their taxonomy and species descriptions were done in the
1800s, before the age of plant genetics.

Based on the latest genetic information of California's native grasses,
we concluded that there's about 100 ADDITIONAL SPECIES in California to
be discovered and described, in Stebbins, G. Ledyard and Craig C.
Dremann. 1998. Jepson Manual chromosome numbers may indicate new
"cryptic" native grass species. GRASSLANDS (http://www.cnga.org, Davis,
California)  8 (3): 4-5. 

So you can see that we can fuss and fuss about the definition of "native
plant" for years and years, and never get to the core of the
issue---which is the GENETICS and the ECOTYPES of those plants, so we
can be successful when we go to replant them, or preserve their
populations insitu.  

The fastest way to have failures in the replanting of native plants, at
least out here in the arid West, is to not use a local ecotype. So the
second thing you must do to have a successful planting, after you've
first defined "LOCAL NORTH AMERICAN NATIVE PLANT" is to be able to
define "ECOTYPE".

You can also read some other discussions about the native plant ecotype
question at http://www.ecoseeds.com/juicy.gossip.three.html

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




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