Threatened nativeplant species key to unlocking climate-resilient future

August 4, 2024 2:01 AM

Threatened native plant species aren't cute and cuddly, but the key to unlocking a climate-resilient future. Brandan Espe goes to great lengths — and occasionally puts his life at risk — to collect rare plants due to their environmental importance.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (3 comments total)

With just a little research about your local area you too can do this. Find the little patches of native plants still growing in your area, grab the seeds and propagate them around.

Every time you walk by that abandoned lot (or whatever), and see all the native wild flower seeds you dropped in there growing you will get a smile on your face.

You can also rip up your lawn and plant all native plants as well, after the plants are in the bugs/bees/butterflies come back, and once the bugs/plants come back so do the birds.

It will sooth your soul, and you don't even have to do anything dangerous. It only takes a very small patch of land, you can use the strip between the sidewalk and the road even.
posted by stilgar at 4:14 AM on August 4 [1 favorite]

Excuse me, but I feel I must argue that some threatened native plant species ARE cute and cuddly. Even in Australia.

I dare you to tell me you don't feel an urge to pet this endangered Australian cushion plant or this endangered Australian rock tassel fern or this pyramid mulla mulla flower. Convince me that the itty bitty pink flowers on this scruffy verticordia aren't cute as buttons.

(Please don't actually cuddle with these plants though; they're endangered.)
posted by BlueJae at 8:15 AM on August 4 [1 favorite]

I was not at all on board for "too big to fail," but I am very much on board for "too cuddly to endanger." (Although, of course, the ugly and the prickly should be saved too.)

I've seldom seen native wildflowers (in Texas for me, but I assume it's true anywhere) whose beauty I don't find to outshine the standard cultivated stuff. I think, more than any specific aesthetics of one plant or another, it's important for people to learn to appreciate the beauty in unplanned wilderness. As stilgar says, I get a lot of joy from the weeds in abandoned lots these days, even though I haven't been brave enough to do the planting myself.
posted by It is regrettable that at 8:42 AM on August 4 [1 favorite]