Just wonderful presentation. Thanks so much. Answered (thoroughly) questions I've been wondering about and some I never knew to ask. Really well done!!!
The Koppen Gieger climate map shows a similar zone in eastern South America; is that the next place where me might find many new garden plants? (Great presentation!)
Yes - Argentina is an excellent source of interesting ornamental plants. There was a popular ornamental 20 years ago called Pampas grass that comes from there. JCRA director Mark Weathington just did a plant collection expedition to Uruguay earlier this year and got lots of interesting things...Uruguay is like an arid South Carolina in climate.
When are we going to consider the evolutionary impact of our plant swaps on all the other animals…given the life that is here is the ONLY known life in the universe. It is inconceivable to me, that when the only approach to invasive plants is to then introduce new animals here to eat them (which often don’t just eat the invader), why we don’t see introducing plants “for our entertainment” with no natural predators as the very real problem that it is…ie causing depauperation and extinction faster than climate change? My great-great grandfather, David Fairchild began, near the end of his life to start to see the problems he had introduced with 25,000 plant introductions. Pretty sure he’d be “up” with the latest ecological science. I cannot believe that our botanical gardens have not become the leaders in native landscape and plant stewardship. The Fairchild Tropical garden, for example, is trying to repatriate 1 million native orchids back to the landscape. I really hope our species gets a clue soon, because the more I learn about ecology and the threat we are to what supports us in virtually every possible ways, the more suicidally insane the species appears to me. I am quietly working away on my one acre, planting and stewarding native plants, and more and more birds arrive, probably as much from loss of habitat and migration resting places virtually everywhere else rather than my humble efforts. We stand to lose migrating and ground nesting species very imminently if we don’t fight the invasive species (which many botanical gardens are responsible for) and start teaching people restorative gardening. Plants (and birds, etc.) are not “pets”…they all have jobs to do, and we need to wake up quickly, and stop being guided by people who have “human engineered” plants that are now driving evolution, and “products” such as fertilizers and pesticides poisoning the land and water. We need to get back to the land, learn to love “bite marks” on leaves, and see beauty in our native plants, or we will be very lonely before we too die from our own stupidity. 96% of our songbirds rely on insects for food. I grow baby birds, frogs, dragonflies and butterflies in my garden…far more beautiful and interesting than some garish flower or outlandish inedible leaf creating food deserts for native co-evolved animals. The CUMULATIVE impact of introduced species needs to be evaluated…I increasingly see whole tracks of ground with zero native plants. Not good.
