Why “NATIVE” Plants?
What do we mean by "plant native" and why? What is a "native plant"
I focus on learning what's native no matter where I go because there is a very important context there to be had, and it gives us a much broader perspective on the ecosystem and living fabric of which we are all a part.
What is a native plant? A native plant is a plant that existed in a place before humans were able to transport plant species across the globe by the thousands, haphazardly mixing key elements of ecosystems that prior to had been separated for millions of years by oceans, the equator, and the polar zones.
When you see a native plant, you are looking at the original living skin of the Earth in that place. You are seeing the green living skin of the Earth that is specific to that place : it exists there and specifically looks and behaves (flowering time, interactions with pollinators, dispersers, etc) the way that it does as a result of literally millions of years of natural selection and evolution in THAT SPECIFIC PLACE. That environment, that landscape, that geology, that climate, those native herbivores, those native pollinators - those are just a few of the factors that selected for and essentially bred that plant to be what it is today.
As humans mindlessly continue to dismantle the biosphere - an act that is similar to cracking open the hood of a Chevy and just beginning to whimsically rip out tubes, rotors, belts, and gaskets like a happy-go-lucky moron without even trying to figure out what those pieces do - the vast majority of us in our ignorance lack any context for which the living fabric around us evolved. This is easy for us to do because most of it has been destroyed and we have so thoroughly been disconnected from the land and worldwide biosphere of species that supports us. We are tinkering with a giant Jenga Tower, removing important blocks that are essential to holding up the tower because we selfishly assume that because those wood blocks don't observably directly benefit us that they can be disposed of. We behave this way because we LACK CONTEXT.
Native plants are this context. The plants that are native in a place are the result of having evolved there. They are the result of traits that have been selected for by the environment itself : by the climate, the herbivores that exist in that region, the specific suite of pollinators that exist in that region, the geology. In this way, we can see that quite literally, everything in an ecosystem is connected.
We lack context for how the land around us functions, for how the life that lives on it interacts, what the relationships between those native organisms are - the fungi, insects, birds, mammals, reptiles, and plants. This biological machine, this ecosystem, worked fine before this civilization that we now live under began to tinker with it. It worked fine because it was the result of millions of years of evolution (specifically, of co-evolution). The same way that a species can evolve and change throughout time, so can a large ecosystem. A species of plant or animal is just the smallest unit of an ecosystem or bioregion. When we zoom out both spatially and temporally - when we think beyond our own short human lifespans - we can begin to see how the ecosystem functions in keeping the land and all the organisms within it healthy. If the ecosystem somehow couldn't keep the land and the smaller units which comprise it healthy, these organisms would begin to blink out and go extinct - a phenomenon that we are seeing right now. The more species that begin to drop off, and soon enough the phenomenon becomes a cascade. Remove enough blocks from the Jenga tower and it will eventually collapse.
Our entire civilization is disconnected from the life and the land that surround us, despite how much it nurtures and supports us, despite how much it makes our lives and existence so much more pleasant and bearable. Our entire concept of what plants are and what purpose they should serve around us is tainted. We think plant species should only be planted to "look pretty" (whatever that means) or feed us, not realizing that all plants are responsible for sustaining us. We think the plants that exist on the landscapes that we surround ourselves with should be the garbage that we purchase out of bgi box stores like Home Despot or Lowe's - the overbred, greenhouse-hybridized descendants of plants that evolved 5,000 miles away in places and regions that in no way resemble that ones that we live in. We don't even know what's "natural" anymore. We have normalized the abnormal. We don't understand how the living world around us functions, and we have no clue how we even fit into it. We are lost. This is the fundamental tragedy of the modern day.
The living web that we are a part of nurtures us, keeps us sane, cleans our air, mitigates the effects of our heat waves and our floods, creates the pleasant smells we smell at night when we walk next to a field of photosynthetic, respiring organisms.
We are philosophically disconnected from this world. We made the mistake of thinking that severing our connection to it was a good idea simply because - due to the intellectual minority among us - we gained the technology to do so. Rather than stay united with the living world and using our technology to nurture our relationship with it, we have abandoned that living world altogether. We lack all context for it. Native Plants are the foundation of that context. Native Plants are how we lead our asses out of these lonely dark ages that we have put ourselves into as a species. Plant the Native Plants and everything else positive will follow.
