Plant Conservation Quiz

Posted by Barbara M. Martin May 18, 2006

Plant for the Planet has developed a nifty gardener's checklist to help you see how much you are doing to help (or hinder) plant conservation efforts.

It is interesting to see how wide a net the checklist covers, and how many different areas of gardening awareness and activities are included. You might be surprised!

For instance, do you verify that native plants you purchase for your garden have been nursery propagated and are not harvested or stolen from the wild?

Some of the points raised are well worth discussing, and plant industry experts and professionals are not always in agreement. For instance, would it be worth limiting our plant selection to only those plants that are native to our precise location? Would you be willing to do that? It would mean, for instance, no more hybrid tea roses, no more peonies or lilacs.

What if the planting site has been so disturbed that it no longer offers the same planting conditions as it did in its pristine state? A good example of this would be swamp land that has been drained and filled. The original plants could no longer survive there and planting them would be an exercise in futility.

Do difficult planting conditions warrant the use of an alien or non-native plant that will thrive there with little maintenance? Is there a public benefit to low maintenance plantings? How about plantings along railroad tracks to prevent children and animals from wandering onto the tracks and to reduce noise and to trap dust? Would that warrant using a potentially invasive but stalwart-enough-to-survive non-native? Strip mining reclamation sites?

And how do you define invasive? At what point does a plant that escapes cultivation become a serious threat to the native plants and the environment?

What about the "wildflowers" we assume to be native but are long term escapees, such as Queen Anne's Lace or chickory? Do we need to eradicate those? How about the wild and invasive Japanese honeysuckle? Or the wild mustard?

Like I said, it's an interesting list of questions covering a wide array of issues. Quiz yourself at Plant for the Planet's Gardeners Plant Conservation Check List and see how you measure up.