bplant.org Blog
Smarter & More Informative Search Results
January 13th, 2025 by Alex Zorach
Users have requested we make our search "smarter", and we are pleased to announce progress on this front. Last summer we announced search improvements that return unlinked records to external websites when a scientific name search returns no results. Behind-the-scenes, this system has been notifying us of the searches so we can interlink the corresponding records after resolving any taxonomic disparities. This process has taken a lot of time and work but is already yielding results, as we are seeing fewer unmatched searches over time.Today we announce a more visible improvement. When typing in a scientific synonym or alternate common name, our search not only matches synonyms and alternate names, but shows which record each matched name points to. The notation involves multiple lines: the first line shows the record matched in our system, with the accepted scientific name in our treatment; next to this name is the authority (original author) of the accepted name. The second line shows the match to the search query, a different name that refers to the same taxon under our treatment. An arrow pointing up shows which synonym points to which record.
The Same Scientific Name Can Point To Different Species
Note that searches for a single name may return multiple records because different authors may use the same name to refer to different taxa. Our search improvements aim to concisely communicate these relationships.Here is an example:

If you click on any of these articles, the top of the article will show taxonomy notes clarifying relevant details in more depth.
If you are having trouble resolving author names, you may find Wikipedia's List of botanists by author abbreviation helpful.
Searching for Species That Have Been Split

In some cases, a species has been split, and what were formerly considered to be sub-taxa of a single species (such as varieties or subspecies) are now considered to be separate species. The search now does more-or-less the same thing for the sub-taxa, showing which names point to which species. The return of multiple records in this case is important, because a person searching for a particular name might not know that the taxon referred to by the name has been split in our treatment.
An illustrative example of a multi-way split is seen in this search for Nuphar lutea:

Our search not only matches this species (with a stub article explaining the split) but also four former subspecies, pointing to the respective species they have been renamed to.
Yet another phenomenon that our search matches in this manner are misspellings and alternate endings. Alternate endings in scientific names are common because the names are in Latin, and the conventions for naming can sometimes cause disagreement between declension and/or grammatical gender (of which Latin has 3.) Authors fluent in Latin will occasionally "correct" a name, which then conflicts with the conventions of taxonomy, in which the oldest name is accepted. One such example is betatakin fiddleleaf (Nama retrorsum), where the mismatched name is the accepted one, but the "corrected" name Nama retrorsa where the genders match is more widely used. Alternate endings are also common in third-declension nouns, because the gender is not as clear from the noun itself, such as how flax-leaved stiff-aster (Ionactis linariifolia) is also referred to as Ionactis linariifolius. In some cases, the accepted name has matched genders, but people sometimes use alternate names with mismatched genders anyway, such as with piedmont leather-root (Orbexilum lupinellum), where the mismatched name Orbexilum lupinellus is in widespread use.

Besides alternate endings, other common misspellings include adding or omitting an "i" or "a" (mac/mc) or hyphens, or exchanging "ae" for "oe" or "i" for "y". Some such examples include pecan (Carya illinoinensis) being misspelled Carya illinoensis (missing "i"), tufted evening primrose (Oenothera caespitosa) being misspelled Oenothera cespitosa, or the stansbury cliffrose (Purshia stansburiana) being misspelled Purshia stansburyana.
We do not exhaustively list all possible mispellings and typos; our site does not perform a "fuzzy search", and part of the reason why is that we want you to be able to be certain when a search does not return anything, a limitation of approximate search matches that can make it hard to figure out when a certain record does not exist. If you type an exact name into our search, and no results are returned, you can be certain that there is no corresponding record by that name. However, we are trying to list as many misspellings and alternate endings as we can, whenever they have been published. Keep in mind our listing of these alternate entries is an ongoing process and is far from complete; we are focusing on the more commonly-used ones first to maximize utility. If we find such a spelling or ending in any published source and bring it to our attention, we will add it.
Tip For Searches When Uncertain of Spelling
Our search functions differently from a typical web search, in that it does not split the search into words. Understanding the differences can help you use it more effectively, as it can do some things that a typical web search cannot do.The search returns only exact matches to what you type in, but it does return matches to incomplete names. Thus if you are uncertain of some aspect of the spelling, an easy way to search is to leave off the portion of the name you are uncertain about. For example, suppose you have trouble spelling the genus "Symphyotrichum"; you can easily locate this genus in your search by typing in the first few letters "Sym" and then you can find the correct spelling in the results, and copy-and-paste this, or just remember it. You can also use these sorts of truncated searches to save time. For example, if searching for the unwieldly crookedstem aster (Symphyotrichum prenanthoides), you can type in only "um pre" and it will return this species (and in this case only this species, believe it or not!)
Note however that the search must only be truncated at the beginning or end of the full search string. If you type in "Sym pre" it will not match anything.
Alternate Common Names Are Matched Similarly
The features above are richest for scientific names, but we have also implemented the same type of matching for common names. As we explained last spring, we give preference to better common names when possible, while retaining older, problematic names as well as adding as many alternate names as we can find.
As with the rest of our site, the search is a work-in-progress, so it will get better as we continue adding alternate names.
We are grateful to all our donors who help support this work along with all of the other aspects of our site. This post only covers one of many things we have been working on lately. Other highlights include that we have begun publishing goldenrod (Solidago) ID guides, we have built hundreds of more range maps, completing many of them into Canada and Alaska, and we have also added the ability to credit authors/coauthors, reviewers, editors, and other contributors on our articles, laying the foundation for more people to contribute to our site. We hope to publish more posts on other updates soon.
For now, enjoy the improved search!

The Effect of the 2024 US Election on Plant Biodiversity and bplant.org
October 30th, 2024 by Alex Zorach
bplant.org is an educational and scientific website. Its mission is to facilitate preserving, protecting, and restoring biodiversity, through a focus on wild plants in North America. Although bplant is not focused on politics, our goals are affected by the political system and outcome of elections, especially in the US. Furthermore, our site utilizes many US government resources, many of which will be affected by the election.This blog post outlines both the ways in which the upcoming US presidential election could affect bplant.org, and the ways it could affect plant biodiversity through several different mechanisms: climate change, policies affecting land use, and the general attitude towards science in society as a whole.
Government Resources bplant.org Uses
bplant.org directly utilizes many different government resources. We use the USDA PLANTS database for researching plant ranges, resolving taxonomic issues, assessing wetland status, and in the case of plants with more detailed fact sheets or other data available, informing our habitat sections of articles. The Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) has unparalleled information about the fire ecology of many plants, and also has extensive information on other aspects of plant ecology including habitat, faunal associations, and uses in ecological restoration. Silvics of North America has detailed articles on trees and their ecology.A central aspect of bplant has been our ecoregion-based maps, ecoregion-based plant lists and search, and related tools like the ecoregion locator. We use the US EPA Ecoregion data in the US, and the CEC Ecoregion Data for all of North America. The CEC (Commission for Environmental Cooperation) is a collaborative effort of Canada, Mexico and the United States, working on environmental issues of common concern.
Although we use these government resources heavily, there are numerous others we consult sporadically or use as references for isolated articles or topics. There are also many resources we use, such as websites maintained by public universities at the state level, and research published in peer-reviewed journals, which rely indirectly on federal funding. We also make heavy use of public domain photographs for our ecoregion articles, using photos published by the Bureau of Land Management, National Park System, US Fish and Wildlife Agency, and other federal agencies.

There are major policy differences between Harris and the Democrats on one side, and Trump and the Republicans on the other. Across the board, Trump and the Republicans have expressed more hostility towards the Federal Bureaucracy, especially the EPA, showing the intent to cut spending particularly in areas related to science and environmental protection. Furthermore, Trump has proposed to dramatically cut education funding, whereas Harris has pledged to maintain or expand it. Others within the Republican party, including key people in Trump's administration, have outlined a plan called Project 2025 which proposes even more extreme cuts to these federal agencies. It is likely that all or most of the resources we use will suffer to some degree under a Trump presidency, whereas under a Harris presidency they will be more likely to be maintained and/or expanded.
We will be able to achieve more in the work we do under a Harris presidency.
The Effect on Climate Change
Climate change is arguably the single largest threat to biodiversity. Global warming, one component of this change, pushes plant ranges farther north in the northern hemisphere, and to higher elevations. Some populations and species are becoming threatened, whereas others are expanding their ranges. Climate change also affects plants through changes in precipitation, with some areas becoming wetter and others drier, and through an increase in severe weather, including droughts, flooding, and severe wind from hurricanes and/or tornadoes. These changes are already happening. As I write, a huge portion of the US is in a drought, visible on the Drought Monitor (yet another federally-funded resource) and earlier this year, the US was hit by two devastating hurricanes. These other factors also alter where plants can and cannot thrive. Overall, climate change is making conditions more extreme and stressful for plants, as it is for humans.
Climate change interacts with other threats such as habitat loss, fragmentation, introduction of invasive species, and other human-induced changes to the environment. Although plants have some ability to adapt to all of these challenges, the pace at which the changes happen is important. The faster and greater the changes, the less plants will be able to adapt, and the more biodiversity will be lost. As such, it is important to minimize the effect of climate change and slow its rate. The slower it occurs, the greater our opportunity to protect and preserve plant biodiversity. In a best-case scenario, we may be able to restore plant populations faster than they are being lost, and help plants to colonize new habitats as their ranges change.
There is a stark difference in the stances on climate change taken by Harris and Trump. Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and has referred to it as a "hoax", and has harshly attacked people who describe climate change as a major threat to future generations. His policies during his first presidency increased fossil fuel use, reversed many regulations aimed to combat climate change, and resulted in the US withdrawing temporarily from the Paris Accords on climate change. Trump also specifically targeted climate-related programs for cuts, in the Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, although some of these cuts were thankfully blocked by an uncooperative congress.
Harris, on the other hand, not only acknowledges the need to act on the issue of climate change, but has also pushed for greater action. The Democrats have consistently acknowledged climate change as a problem and taken greater measures to address it, whereas only a portion of Republicans have done so, with others either denying or greatly downplaying its effects. Biden immediately reversed the US's withdrawal from the Paris Accords, leaving the US only having withdrawn from it for a total of 107 days. The Biden administration has also undertaken a long list of other actions to fight climate change, from shifting from fossil fuel subsidy to green energy subsidy, to efforts to reduce deforestation and land degradation, reducing transportation emissions, and reducing emissions from agriculture. Harris has expressed a desire to continue and expand these policies.
On this topic of climate change, Harris is clearly the better candidate for protecting plant biodiversity.
The Attitude Towards Science as a Whole
bplant.org is a science-based website, and we advocate a scientific approach as the best way to protect plant biodiversity. The scientific method is the best approach we humans have found to discerning truth, establishing facts, and where possible, beginning to understand cause-and-effect and build theories about how the world works. Science is important both for deciding what to set as our policy goals, and for evaluating which policies would be most effective at attaining those goals.Harris and Trump have adopted different attitudes towards science. Especially during the COVID pandemic, Trump undermined government scientists by publicly contradicting them, and behind-the-scenes he also suppressed and censored them. This problem extends beyond policy into culture, creating a deep-seated public mistrust in science. An Editorial in Scientific American writes: "anti-intellectualism threatens evidence-based policymaking by motivating dangerous opposition to scientific consensus on important issues related to public health, climate change and the economy", and an editorial in Nature argues that Trump "Damaged Science" as a whole. Harris on the other hand has voiced consistent support for science, and Harris even comes from a more scientific background, as her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a biomedical scientist.

There is a strong consensus among scientists, particularly among the most recognized of them, that Harris is the better choice. 82 American Nobel Prize Winning Scientists have endorsed Harris; these people's prizes span the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine and economics. Scientific American has endorsed Harris, in their second-ever presidential endorsement. This endorsement was defended by editorials in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) and the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Nature, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world, also published an editorial favoring Harris. It is unusual for popular-science outlets such as bplant.org or Scientific American to make political endorsements, and perhaps even more unusual for peer-reviewed journals like Science and Nature or scientific trade publications like C&EN or ACSH to enter into this dialogue, but the stakes here are high.
Harris is the better choice for restoring and maintaining trust in science.
Policies Affecting Land Use
One of the most important things for protecting plant biodiversity is the preservation of wild habitats in which plants are able to reproduce naturally. Wild areas can exist on both public and private land, and public land in the US can be owned at various levels, including federal, state, county, and local levels.
Public (government-owned) land constitutes 40% of the total land in the US, and Federally-owned land makes up a whopping 27.5% of the total land. Furthermore, the public federal land consists mostly of wild areas, whereas the private lands are much more likely to be developed, either for urban, suburban, or industrial use, or agriculture. As such, federally-owned lands contain the largest areas of wild plant habitat. However, it is not just the area that is important, but its quality. Private land tends to be held on small lots. Not only is private land more likely to be fragmented by a dense road network, but the land use itself is spotty as each land owner may make different management choices. Federal lands house the largest unbroken pieces of habitat and as such have greater ecological value than suggested by their area alone.

Trump made numerous changes to public lands, many of which were highly damaging to ecosystems. The National Parks Conservation Association writes: "President Trump and the officials he appointed systematically undermined, degraded and outright attacked the laws that protect our public lands, the agencies that manage them..." and has an 8-page long list of specific actions and commentary on the effects they had, which include selling off public land, weakening environmental protections, and allowing more commercial exploitation. Yale Environment 360 wrote about how many of these changes were hard to reverse, but that the Biden administration has tried to undo as much of this damage as possible. They clarify that 125 of the rule changes had the effect of favoring special interests on public lands; a lot of them involve oil and gas leases, which are hard to reverse and also contribute to climate change.
Harris has pledged to more-or-less pursue similar policies to the Biden Administration, doing her best to protect public land, whereas Trump is likely to do more of what he did during his first administration, leading to loss of public land and degradation of the habitats on it.
Harris is the better choice for protecting wild habitats on public lands.
A Note on Third Parties
You may have noticed that so far, this article has only mentioned two candidates for the presidency. For better or for worse, the US has a two-party system, with a few caveats. There is no other candidate besides Harris and Trump who has a realistic chance of winning, so a vote for a third party can, at best, serve only as a symbolic "protest vote". Because the president is elected through the electoral college, the effect of voting for a third-party candidate is different in a "swing" state where the election is expected to be close, vs. in a state where it is virtually guaranteed that one party wins. In a swing state, a vote for a third party is effectively sitting out, so in a case where there is a major difference between the two mainstream candidates, it is important to vote for the better of the two.In swing states, a vote for a third-party candidate risks throwing the election in favor of the worse candidate.
In Summary
It is with great frustration that I write this post. In an ideal world, trust in science, and commitment to combat climate change and protect wild habitats and the biodiversity that depends on them, would not be political issues. There would be a broad consensus on these goals, and the political process could center on a healthy and respectful debate about the best and most effective ways to achieve them. And popular science outlets like bplant.org could largely stay out of the political discussion, perhaps only stepping in occasionally to comment on specific policy proposals.But this is not the world we live in. The upcoming US presidential election will have consequences both on the resources we use to develop and maintain bplant.org, and even larger consequences on plant biodiversity. I urge you to support Kamala Harris in this election.
The Problems With Nursery-Bought Plants, And The Solutions
October 8th, 2024 by Alex Zorach
Over the past several decades, we have seen a shift towards management-intensive landscapes, meaning that progressively less and less of our environment is taken up by wild or semi-wild ecosystems, and more is maintained as landscaping, including lawns, planted trees and shrubs, and manicured flower beds.
With few exceptions, plants in managed landscapes are purchased at commercial nurseries. Retail nurseries are the final point in a supply chain that also includes wholesale nurseries and growers that produce plants, as well as horticulturalists and the organizations that employ them, breeding and testing various plants. Wholesale nurseries also supply plants for the plant sales of non-profit organizations such as universities, conservation organizations, national organizations like the Arbor Day Foundation and local municipalities that give away trees, and also ecological restoration projects and other large-scale plantings like roadside projects for erosion control, land reclamation, and reforestation. Some of these plants get planted in managed landscapes and others go directly into the wild.
Between the direct restoration plantings, and the offspring of plants seeding out into wild ecosystems, an increasing portion of wild ecosystems is made up of plants either sourced through this supply chain, or descended from such plants.
The effect of this industry on our environment has been far more negative than positive. In this post we outline two of the main causes of harm: the introduction of invasive plants through breeding, production, distribution, and sale of exotic plants, and the widespread planting of non-local stock of native plants, often erasing and overwriting local population genetics. Our post also outlines solutions. We show how the horticulture industry can embrace a new approach that protects local wild populations and their unique genetics while also being lucrative for the industry and creating good jobs. We also show how, in the meanwhile, gardeners and people doing ecological restoration work can grow and source plants without relying on the nursery industry's broken supply chain.
How has the ornamental plant industry caused harm?
Introduction of Invasive Species
An overwhelming majority of the worst invasive plants in North America were intentionally introduced as landscaping plants. Our analysis of the 96 species on the Delaware Invasive Species Council's Invasive Plant List found that 67 of them, about 70%, originated as ornamental or landscaping plants, and only 7 of these ornamentals also had other uses such as food or fodder. Ornamentals (70%) are a much greater source of invasive introduction than other sources, such as accidental introduction (22%), food plants (11%), or other intentional uses (7%). (These figures add to more than 100% because some plants had multiple paths of introduction.)
Continent-wide, the list of invasive plants introduced as ornamentals includes trees such as tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) and Norway maple (Acer platanoides), shrubs such as amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) and chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense), vines such as Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) and porcelain berry (Ampelopsis glandulosa), and numerous smaller plants such as lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria), purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), butter and eggs (Linaria vulgaris), or common iceplant (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum). Many invasive plants cause collapse of the food web because they tend not to be eaten by as many native specialist insects; some can cause other problems, such as how iceplant causes slumping and other soil erosion, or the introduced honeysuckles can worsen deer over-browsing. All of them directly compete with, and thus threaten populations of native plants, and they tend to replace highly diverse communities and replace them with monocultures or at least less-diverse plant communities.
These plants were actively bred, marketed and promoted, and then sold and widely planted, leading to their establishment at various locations across North America. From gardens they escaped into the wild, and their wide planting made it extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to remove them from the wild once they had established.

The breeding likely contributed to these plants' invasiveness. The horticulture industry tends to select for traits such as climate hardiness, insect resistance, ease of propagation, and ability to survive in a range of conditions with little care. The selection for insect resistance increases the likelihood both that a plant will have a competitive advantage in the wild, and that it will lead to food web collapse if it does become invasive. The other traits contribute to invasiveness by increasing a plant's fitness in a new region.
Furthermore, when developing cultivars, horticulturalists often cross-breed plants from different sources throughout the plant's native range in order to access a greater pool of genetic diversity to work with. This process alone often increases the plant's vigor and thus its potential to become invasive.
Wilson et. al. (2009) outline how biological invasions tend to involve multiple introductions from multiple sources to multiple locations, and genetic diversity is a key mediator of this effect. The breeding of ornamental plants and widespread planting of these plants thus directly plays into both of these factors, by sourcing plants from different portions of their native ranges, and then planting them in many different locations. On top of this, the selection for insect resistance, hardiness on this continent, and ease of propagation all directly increase the likelihood of invasiveness. The industry is engaging in nearly all of the behaviors that would be expected to make these plants invasive. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that this industry has created most of our invasive plants.
Selling of Plants Poorly Adapted to Their Environment
The problem of creating invasives is at one end of the spectrum; it can be seen as what results when people select exotic plants that grow "too well". However it is not intentional, and the same industry can also err in the other direction, breeding, producing and/or selling plants that do not grow well-enough.Horticulture develops, promote, and sells plants with little to no regard for the unique habitat preferences of particular plants. In many respects, it is the opposite of our approach of thinking more deeply about habitat. The lack of focus on habitat is why most gardening sources will tell you to grow everything in "moist, well-drained soil", generic conditions in which just about any plant would survive. But not every site is ideal; to the contrary, a majority of sites have some type of adverse conditions.
For example, in regions with drought-prone coarse, sandy soils, such as the outermost portions of Long Island, nurseries sell all the same plants as in regions with richer soils, and people's landscaping looks stunted as a result. In some cases, the poorly-adapted plants will look okay for many years, only to become stressed and/or die suddenly in a year with more extreme weather.

Not only does this phenomenon lead to stunted plants, it drives a lot of resource usage as people pour money and effort into irrigation, soil enrichment, or even importing new soil. In the West, such wasteful water usage worsens already-severe problems like depleted aquifers or the fact that the U.S. has used up nearly all the water in the Colorado River before it reaches its delta, which has devastated the delta's ecosystems and also devastated the fishing industry in the Gulf of California. Stressed plants growing on unsuitable sites can also create costly accidents, especially with trees, which can fall on buildings, vehicles, or even injure people.
The phenomenon of nurseries selling the same generic plants everywhere has worsened in the past 3 or so decades, as the US and Canada have both experienced a consolidation of retail establishments into regional, national, or multinational box stores. Not only have smaller businesses closed and been replaced by larger ones, but there has been a shift away from specialty retailers and towards generic ones. Nowadays, a huge portion of plants are not sold at proper plant nurseries, but rather, at generic retailers such as Home Depot, Lowe's, or even Wal-Mart, that have nursery departments or sections. With these consolidations, knowledge and expertise relevant to local conditions has been lost. There is also an economic loss: higher-skill, higher-pay jobs get replaced by lower-skill, lower-pay jobs in a "race to the bottom", where companies derive profits primarily by cutting costs.
Erasing and Overwriting Local Genetics of Native Plants
Some plants have vast native ranges, and within these ranges, the genetics of plants can be quite different from one portion of its range to another. The different forms adapted to particular conditions are called ecotypes. Ecotypes are sometimes recognized as sub-taxa such as varieties or subspecies. In most cases, no subtaxa are recognized, but the genetic diversity and variability of form that is associated with adaptation to local conditions is still present. In these cases, the variation forms a continual intergrade rather than being able to be broken cleanly into separate groups.Long before I studied ecotypes, I had noticed that when people take an individual plant across long distances and plant it elsewhere, it often does not do as well as the local plants of the same species. For example, when I was a young child, my parents had transplanted an American holly (Ilex opaca) tree from my grandparents' yard in Arkansas, planting it in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and it always struggled. Its leaves were yellower, it grew slowly, and it never looked as lush or healthy as other hollies. But volunteer hollies came up in our yard, and they grew faster, kept consistently green leaves, and grew lush and full. One such tree, much younger than the Arkansas-sourced holly, eventually overtopped the much-older Arkansas tree, and has continued to grow taller. It is pictured below.

I also noticed that, much of the time, wild volunteer plants grew more vigorously than nursery-bought plants of the same species. This sparked me to wonder if part of the reason why the nursery plants were growing so poorly was that they were not derived from local populations, and thus not adapted to the local soil or climate conditions.
So I began asking nurseries where their stock was derived from, and I found that, an overwhelming majority of times they just didn't know. I'd talk to a manager or owner, and they wouldn't know either. In some cases they referred me to their supplier, a wholesaler, and after networking and talking to people working for several different wholesalers, I came to the conclusion that the suppliers didn't know either. People in the wholesale nursery industry generously took their time to explain to me about how the supply chain for the nursery industry worked, and I was shocked to find that almost no one kept any records about which plant populations their stock was derived from. Rather, growers would just breed certain lines of plants and then sell them, and there was minimal information about the origins of the various lineages.
Many of these lineages have been isolated from wild populations for generations now, and selected for traits such as insect resistance and propagation in a nursery setting. Even Mt. Cuba Center, often hailed as a leader in the native plant movement, suffers from this approach. Although Mt. Cuba makes sure their plants provide value to the food web through functioning as insect food, their trial garden still tests plants only in a typical garden setting, meaning a mulch bed in more-or-less mesic conditions (moist and well-drained.) Plants adapted to other conditions are given a lower score if they perform poorly in test plots, even if they thrive in the more naturalistic gardens elsewhere on the grounds. Plant breeders are often selecting for similar characteristics, and thus may breed out the traits that make plants adapted to their unique habitat in the wild.
When people buy and plant nursery-grown plants, whether in their yards or gardens, or in ecological restoration projects, they are adding genetics which have three features:
- The source population(s) are unknown.
- Multiple source populations, perhaps far apart, may have been interbred to produce the line.
- The plants have been selected, often over many generations, for horticultural attributes.
How Nurseries Can Fix These Problems
The problems discussed above are fully solvable, but they require a rethinking of the way the ornamental plant trade works. The goal is for nurseries to sell only locally-native plants, derived from local, wild populations. However, getting to this point is a challenge, because it requires a fundamental rethinking and restructuring of the wholesale part of the supply chain.Selling Only Locally-Native Plants
There are no objective reasons why commercial nurseries ever need to grow introduced plants for landscaping. North America has incredible plant biodiversity. In a particular place, there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of locally-native plant species to choose from. The first change that needs to happen is an end to the importing and breeding of introduced plants for landscaping. This change includes the importing of plants onto other continents, which is the source of the most severe invasive plants, but it also includes the moving of plant material around regionally, which can still create problems, even if it is less likely to cause as severe problems.Sourcing Plants From Local Wild Populations
Sourcing local ecotype plants can be tricky, but also fun. I have been doing it myself for many years now. There are nearly endless ways to source local wild plants in ways that are both legal and environmentally-responsible, including:- Isolated rescue plants, such as plants that have seeded into areas where they are going to die if not transplanted. In my experience, most property owners and land managers are happy to give me permission to remove any plant they see as a "weed".
- Large-scale rescue plants, such as plants from a site that is going to be developed or disturbed in such a way that will kill the plants. In this case you can sometimes transplant all of the plants, or harvest all or most of the seed, without causing any harm.
- Responsible seed harvest from a local wild population. In this case, you harvest seed from a thriving population, you take only a negligible portion of the total seed, and you ensure that you are the only one harvesting the seed so that you do not end up taking too much seed in combination with other harvesters.
- Stewardship to protect populations of plants you are harvesting seed from; for example, if you are worried that seed harvesting might reduce the numbers in a population, you can pair the harvest with control of invasive plants in the area where the plants are growing so that you gather seed while also boosting the plant's numbers. If done well, you will actually increase the plant's numbers, to where you can safely harvest more in subsequent years.
- Propagation of plants in gardens or landscaping, either vegetatively or by seed, that were derived from local wild populations. In these cases you can harvest seeds or transplant plants without causing harm to the wild populations, yet while accessing these populations' genetics.
Growing The Plants
The best solution for a supply chain producing locally-derived plants is for the production to become decentralized, with small, local growers in each region, each of whom only grow plants from wild populations native to their area.This solution eliminates the costly and cumbersome recordkeeping tasks, as each grower will only be growing stock sourced locally from near their site. This approach also eliminates the problem of escape of non-local genetic material or mixing of material from different populations, a problem that is essentially impossible to solve if growing plants outdoors, and that can still be costly and imperfect in a greenhouse environment.

There will likely be some cost and lost efficiency relative to the current model of large-scale wholesale nurseries, but this loss may be offset by gains in vigor and ease of growing plants. If growing plants in the climate conditions they are adapted to, they will take less care. Shipping costs will also be greatly reduced. Healthier plants and shorter shipping distance may reduce the amount of plants that die before being purchased. The plants may also command a higher price, reflecting both vigor and environmental benefits.
Furthermore, the movement to raise awareness of the need for this new approach, will itself be a form of marketing and PR to help the public see the added value in the plants produced through this hyper-local method. This blog post is not only a call to action for change within the nursery industry, but it is the first step in the marketing and PR that will create the demand and willingness to pay a higher price for plants produced in this way. And the public will benefit through purchasing healthier plants that grow faster and are longer-lived and more resistant to stressors. People may even save money, if they pay more for plants but those plants are less likely to die and need to be replaced.
Business Models To Produce Plants From Local Stock
There are different business models that could make this approach possible. One would be for conservation organizations that buy wholesale plants, either for their own plantings, or for native plant sales, to source plants from their own grounds and then hire contract growers to produce the plants. For example, the Delaware Nature Society both owns nature preserves with wild populations of plants, and has its own native plant sale, but it currently lacks the capacity to grow enough plants to meet the demand at its own plant sale. However, DNS could source seeds and/or plants from its preserves, contract a grower to grow them to a suitable size for retail sale, and then sell these plants at their plant sale.
A different model would be for an independent small grower to produce plants and then they could sell them to any number of retailers, whether commercial retail nurseries, local native plant sales, or large-scale ecological restoration projects.
Yet another model would be for retail nurseries and/or organizations doing ecological restoration work to grow and propagate plants themselves. Although we do not know if they still do it, back around 2012, Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia propagated some of the plants both for their own native plant sale and for their gardens and surrounding wild habitats. A newer retail nursery has opened in Bainbridge, PA, Hungry Hook Farms, focused on seed-grown plants from local ecotypes in the lower Susquehanna river watershed. There are countless nurseries across the country that are already doing such propagation at least for some of their stock. This model can be viable both in a for-profit and non-profit setting.
What can you do to encourage the necessary change?
Although the problems above may seem intimidating, there are many different angles through which you can tackle them. The first and most important thing is to spread awareness of these issues. If you've read through this post to this point, thank you! You can help by sharing this post and similar material, by talking about it with others, and by writing or publishing about it if you write on these topics.If you work within the nursery industry, whether on the retail or wholesale end, or in any organization relating to ornamental horticulture, ecological restoration, or habitat protection, you can start working on implementing some of these solutions.
If you are only a customer of the nursery industry, whether as an individual, or a large-scale buyer, probably the most important thing you can do to stop buying into nurseries that are far from following best practices on these matters. Do not buy any non-native ornamental plants. If you have not already done so, sign and share the petition to stop Home Depot from selling invasive plants, and support state-level efforts to restrict or ban the sale of invasive plants.
I would go farther, however, and recommend to avoid purchasing any plants that are not derived from local, wild populations. The nursery industry is not going to change just because a minority of people tell them to; they will change when the economics force them to. When you buy plants, even native plants, whose origins are unknown, you support the status quo. And the status quo is a lose-lose. The wholesale nursery industry mass-produces plants of unknown origin, mass-markets them, and most of them get shipped over long distances only to get sold mostly at box retailers where the jobs selling them are low-skill and low-pay. The plants themselves are often unhealthy, and can sometimes pose ecological problems when planted.
Our vision would address all these problems. It would make the industry more efficient, with no shipping material over long distances, and less loss of stock. It would involve more skill and creativity, and would create jobs that were both more fun and interesting, and had better pay. And the public would benefit from healthier plants that would be naturally helping to restore and protect local wild plant populations and their unique genetics. They could pay higher prices yet still save money in the long-run.
However it will take some time to build this new supply chain. In the meanwhile, you can propagate plants yourself. Learn to identify plants, and work with volunteer plants that come up in your own garden or ecological restoration projects. Use the methods described above for sourcing and propagating plants in an environmentally-responsible way.

I would also encourage people to ask tough questions of anyone selling plants. Are these wild-type plants? Are they an ecotype from a specific region? Have different populations been interbred to create these plants? When I started asking such questions, it was clear from peoples' reactions that they were rarely or never asked such questions. This points to the core of the problem: if no one talks about these issues, the problems won't be solved. If, on the other hand, every other person who came into nurseries asked these questions, and refused to buy plants without good answers, it would put pressure on the whole system. People would find ways to fix the problems quickly both because it would affect their bottom line, and because they would be constantly reminded of the matter.
I want to see the ornamental plant industry thrive and create good jobs. However I also do not want to let them off the hook for ongoing damage they are doing to ecosystems. I want the harm to stop immediately, and I want the entire industry to restructure so that it is working to undo and repair the damage already done. I want to work together with this industry, but I also want to put pressure on it so long as it continues to do harm. The status quo is untenable. I have outlined a new path, and I hope I have convinced you it is both realistic and potentially lucrative, representing a "win-win" scenario. Let us work together to bring this vision into being!
Archive of All Blogs
Smarter & More Informative Search Results, January 13th, 2025
The Effect of the 2024 US Election on Plant Biodiversity and bplant.org, October 30th, 2024
The Problems With Nursery-Bought Plants, And The Solutions, October 8th, 2024
More Databases Linked & Search Improvements for Scientific Names, July 9th, 2024
Choosing The Best Common Names For Plants: Challenges & Solutions, April 19th, 2024
Range Map & Taxonomic Update Progress, January 31st, 2024
Giving Thanks To Everyone We Rely On, November 22nd, 2023
Thinking More Deeply About Habitat, April 5th, 2023
2022 Year-End Summary: Successes & New Goals, February 15th, 2023
New Databases Linked: Flora of North America & NatureServe Explorer, November 11th, 2022
All Range Maps 2nd Generation, Taxonomic Updates, & Fundraising Goal Met!, September 29th, 2022
More Range Map Improvements, POWO Interlinking, And Notes Fields, June 7th, 2022
Ecoregion-Based Plant Lists and Search, March 30th, 2022
Progress Updates on Range Maps and More, February 10th, 2022
The Vision for bplant.org, December 9th, 2021
New Server: Software & Hardware, August 30th, 2021
More & Improved Plant Range Maps, July 19th, 2021
A Control Section for Invasive Plants, April 15th, 2021
Progress Bars & State Ecoregion Legends, March 11th, 2021
Our 2020 Achievements, February 9th, 2021
Interlinking Databases for Plant Research, November 11th, 2020
A New Homepage, Highlighting Our Articles, July 29th, 2020
A False Recovery, But North Carolina's Ecoregions are Complete!, June 9th, 2020
We're Back After COVID-19 Setbacks, April 3rd, 2020
Help Us Find Ecoregion Photos, February 27th, 2020
What We Achieved in 2019, December 30th, 2019
Plant Comparison and ID Guides, October 30th, 2019
We Are Now Accepting Donations, October 14th, 2019
US State Ecoregion Maps, New Footer, Ecoregion Article Progress, and References, September 19th, 2019
Tentative Range Maps of Native Plants, August 12th, 2019
Ecoregion Locator and Interactive Maps, July 10th, 2019
Using Ecoregions Over Political Boundaries, May 13th, 2019
How We Handle Wild vs Cultivated Plants, April 16th, 2019
A Blog To Keep People Updated On Our Progress, April 8th, 2019
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