Invasive Plants Give the Wrong Impression of Native Plants

 

The average person doesn’t know native plants from non-native plants. Their perspective is that plants are green things that grow and perform services: they provide oxygen, they hold the soil around your house, they have pretty flowers, and they might even bear edible fruit (or veggies). People find plants to buy in big box stores and nurseries in nice, tidy containers; these are the ‘good’ plants.

Outside of their home and landscaped businesses, people see wild plants on the side of the road and in waste places like vacant lots. Those wild plants can be very messy (think kudzu); these are the ‘bad’ plants. Since they are in the wild, they must be native, right? It’s an unfortunate assumption that many of us try to correct through education.

English ivy at roadside

Thorny olive (Elaeagnus pungens); Photo by Douglas Goldman, USDA

Edges of roads are often have good light, allowing for good seed germination. They are perfect places for wind-blown and wildlife-carried seeds to land, sprout, and grow without much intervention. These can be both native and non-native plants. Roadside edges are not always maintained, especially along smaller roads where much of the land is privately owned. Here thickets of privet (Ligustrum sp.) thrive, autumn and thorny olive shrubs (Elaeagnus sp.) fill in the spaces, and vines like kudzu, Japanese honeysuckle, and English ivy scramble over anything standing still.

Privet thicket next to park walkway, obscuring the beauty of the native forest

When I talk to new people about using native plants, it is the perspective of those wild, roadside plants that they envision. The idea of incorporating native plants into their yard invokes a vision of messy, tangled growth. When you’re talking to folks about native plants, be aware that this perception might be at work. 

Native plants can be used in designs, purchased, and planted just like non-native plants. Most of them grow in well-behaved arrangements just like non-native ornamentals. When properly used, native plants simply are plants that can be chosen to satisfy landscape requirements as much as any plants while also contributing to the health of the local ecosystem.