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

[afrates at addsuminc.com]

I agree that this is a very useful and interesting discussion and 
thanks to everyone who is making an effort in this somewhat 
surprisingly difficult effort.

Here with probably just as many problems is my attempt.


A native plant is:

(a) a member of the plant kingdom which has  
(b) without the assistance or intervention of people 
(c) become a part of the natural ecosystem of a given area.


Tony Frates
Utah Native Plant Society member






Date sent:      	Fri, 25 Aug 2006 13:22:01 -0700
From:           	Craig Dremann <craig at astreet.com>
To:             	larry.morse.dc at earthlink.net,
	native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org
Copies to:      	APWG at lists.plantconservation.org
Subject:        	[PCA] Proposed definition for "Native Plant",
	a couple of  refinements?

> 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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