Guest Rant by Joseph Tychonievich
There has been a lot of discussion in gardening circles about “nativars.” Is the term useful? How is it defined? The latest surge of comment coming from this generally excellent article in the Washington Post.
But there is a concept that gets thrown around in all these discussions that makes me want to scream: That is the idea of a “wild type” or “straight species.” This is generally put forward in contrast to cultivars, the idea being that they are the species as it is in the wild, untouched by human hands.
Here’s the problem.
There is no such thing as a singular wild type or straight species. Wild plants – and all other organisms – do not exist in a single form, they are genetically diverse and variable populations, each individual different. So every single plant you purchase or grow, whether it has a cultivar name attached to it or not, is a selected form. Maybe it was selected because a nursery owner thought it had unusually beautiful or interesting flowers. Or maybe it was selected just because it happened to grow in a meadow where a plant propagator got permission to collect seeds one sunny late summer day.
If you think this is all academic nitpicking, let’s give a concrete example.
Here is a photo of one of my favorite native plants, Hepatica americana. I adore this plant and seek it out everywhere I can every spring. Which one is the wild type? White? Light blue? Dark blue? I can tell you that all these color forms are very common. Sometimes I’ll visit one park and find a population of nearly all blues, then drive just 20 minutes up the road to another woodland and find population that is entirely white, and other times all growing mixed up together like this. Less often, I’ll find pinks, but they’re not that rare; I pretty consistently find a pink or two every large population I’ve seen. Which form will you get if you purchase “wild type” or “straight species” Hepatica americana? Who knows. You will get some selection from natural diversity with no cultivar name attached; you just don’t get any information about what the selection is.
‘Jeana’ phlox at Mt. Cuba Center
This reality plays out in very weird ways. Every thoughtful article I’ve read about nativars cites Mt. Cuba Center’s excellent research on how attractive different varieties are to pollinators and specifically mentions the cultivar Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana’. Here’s how the Washington Post article describes it: “Another surprise nativar standout was Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana’, which outperformed the species “by a huge margin,” Hoadley says.”
Let’s unpack that. By “the species” they mean a Phlox paniculata selection from the wild with no cultivar name attached. In contrast to ‘Jeana’ which is… wait for it… ALSO a selection of Phlox paniculata from the wild. And, because ‘Jeana’ does have a name, it is easy to google and find out that it was first collected by a woman named Jeana Prewitt, who found it growing along the Harpeth River in Nashville, Tennessee.
In other words, the comparison here is not between a wild plant and man-made hybrid; it is between two selections from the wild, one of which we have some information about because it was given a name, and the other about which we know nothing because no one bothered to name it.
Now, of course, not all cultivars are wild selections. Some are complex hybrids, significantly modified by years of active work by plant breeders. But it is easy to differentiate between a selection from the wild, like Phlox ‘Jeana’, and a man-made hybrid, like Phlox ‘Fashionably Early Flamingo’, because they have names attached. Names we can look up to get more information about how they were created. Names that let places like Mt. Cuba compare them and give us all useful information about how many pollinators they attract.
Keeping cultivar names attached to plants isn’t just useful for helping pollinators. Sometimes it is key information about how a plant will – or won’t – perform in your garden. My beloved Hepatica americana has wild populations around me in northern Indiana, and the range extends from the Florida panhandle and all the way up into Ontario. That means most gardeners in the eastern half of North America can grow this wonderful little wildflower, but if the nursery just lists it as “the straight species” who knows what you’ll get. It could be a selection from your part of the country, or it could be one from a far extreme of the range that is going to suffer horribly in your conditions.
So we need more “nativars” in the world. More names. More background on how and where and why a plant was selected. And we need to stop pretending that a plant without a cultivar name attached is anything other than a plant about which we don’t have very much information.
Bravo! This is a most excellent article that I can’t wait to share with my native plant group, many members of which are obsessed with the concept of growing only “straight species” native plants in their gardens. I grow many cultivars of native plants and have noticed some are more favored by beneficial insects than others, including the alleged “straight species” group.
There’s a debate raging here in western PA whether coneflowers (Echinacea spp.) are native to PA. Apparently they are native in Ohio, 30 miles from my home, but not in neighboring Allegheny County, PA. What rubbish. Plants don’t limit their natural spread to artificially assigned boundaries. Thank you for providing a well-written response to the “straight species” only conversation.
As always, Joseph, your ability to get down to the heart of of the issue, proves to be very helpful.
I’ve been wondering about this, but had difficulty even forming the right question. Many thanks for the clarification.
Well said, Joseph, thanks for a thoughtful piece.
Yes. Thank you.
The debate about “nativars,” much like the debate about natives vs. non-natives, is much ado about nothing. For every study “proving” that natives serve insects better than non-natives or cultivars of natives, there is a study that says otherwise.
Here’s an empirical study done in California that was presented at the 2023 annual conference of the California Invasive Plant Council (much to the chagrin of the audience): “Farm edge restoration monitoring in Sacramento Valley highlights native bee use of some exotic plant floral resources. Corey Shake. Point Blue Conservation Science. cshake@pointblue.org
Mr. Shake designed 16 hedgerows around agricultural fields in Yolo County to determine if native bees have a preference for native plants or exotic plants, by controlling for availability of native plants compared to exotic plants. He concluded: “(1) relative to their floral abundance in our plots, some native plant species are more frequently visited by native bees than other native plants that are infrequently or rarely visited, and (2) there is significant native bee visitation to some exotic plants relative to their floral abundance.”
Doug Tallamy himself recently spoke of the limitations of generalizations about the superiority of native plants as food for pollinators: “Many native plants don’t support insects because plants are well-defended against them. Keystone species are making most of the food for the food web. Just 14% of native plants across the country are making 90% of food that drive the food web. 86% of the native plants are not driving the food web. Insect food comes from the big producers, like oaks, black cherries, hickories, and birches.” https://www.thomaschristophergardens.com/podcasts/native-vs-exotic-plants-support-for-insect-populations?fbclid=IwAR0xonZdYo_bNqq-bm6_fSzj7uwkrEfvJAWsNRKgBafxnUSq8zVlGw__inQ
If we cut through all the noise, we can see that generalizations about “nativeness” are not useful. Specific observations can be made about specific plant species and their associations with other specific animal species, but that relationship is not a universal truth.
When will we tire of this tedium? Plant what you want and enjoy it. Surely some of what you plant will also be useful to wildlife in your garden. Greater diversity in the garden is more likely to serve wildlife.
Do the studies include use of the cultivars as host plants?
And… is this ranty enough for you? https://monarchcrusader.com/should-we-still-raise-monarch-butterflies/
Mt Cuba has just looked a pollinator visits. Doug Tallamy has looked at host plants, and if I remember correctly, generally found that only changes to foliage color (eg variegation, dark-leaved forms) resulted in changes in use as host plants.
Thanks! I promote pollinator gardens so I need to know what to say.
I like the term “nativar” when it’s used to mean “native plant, but selected and named because it has properties that make it superior for home garden use”. It is useful to know it hasn’t been highly bred, and is probably still relatively close to wild varieties, and native plants need all the marketing boost they can get.
+100 to the analysis that there really isn’t such a thing as a straight species. Perhaps it would be useful to borrow the medical term “not otherwise specified/NOS”, so things could be described “Hepatica americana, wild NOS”, for example.
Although it might be a good idea to give a variety name your favorite wild plant, how would this be done. There can be several colors growing together in the same field which might be variations of the same plant, like zinnias of the same variety but different colors- Benary’s Giant Deep Red or Benary’s Giant Lilac or Benary’s Giant Mix. Plants from different areas may come from the same seed becoming widespread quickly or may be totally different in form due to evolving in place without mixing with others. I think, at minimum, they should be described by colors and then by form and location of origin, if known.
Couldn’t agree more! The term nativar has evolved into a marketing tool.
The variations in species left to natures course occur and survive into future generations as a result of insect activity, weather and soil properties etc. All species variation in that area will be likely to play it’s ecological role in similar circumstances. This is why restoration uses locally sourced seed and plant material. Human picked varieties are for human need and preference. Plant what you like but don’t pretend the choices of selection for gardens is likely to be superior . As a gardener aware that leaves are eaten, seed is eaten, cover and security is necessary and many species depend on plants for survival, I try to build a community not entirely alien to our local.
I’ve heard Joe speak, and respect his work in hybridizing plants. But I don’t really understand this sentence: “But it is easy to differentiate between a selection from the wild, like Phlox ‘Jeana’, and a man-made hybrid, like Phlox ‘Fashionably Early Flamingo’, because they have names attached.” Why is it easy to differentiate them? How would one determine the difference unless the tag clearly notes it as a hybrid? Nursery tags are about marketing the plant, not giving you a lot of information. Just like the nursery tag won’t tell you that the ever-popular selection of the native Hydrangea arborescens ‘Anabelle’ is sterile and not beneficial to pollinators.
Hi Joseph and others – I am not an expert, but I think you have missed the point of the distinction between straight species vs native/cultivar. When a nursery sells a product called a “wild type” or “straight species” that label indicates that it may contain any of a wide variety of DNA that may result in different colors, size, etc. The plant has not been cross bred over a number of generations by humans to select specific characteristics, or grown vegetatively from the original specimen resulting in identical clones. The term “Nativar” or “Cultivar” is used to communicate to the customer that the selected plant will have a particular subset of features, either particularly desirable characteristics that are occasionally found in the wild, or ones that would never survive multiple generations of reproduction in the wild. Frequently cultivars and nativers are grown either vegetatively so they are a guaranteed clone of the original, or the seeds have been cross bread for so many generations that they no longer have the genetic variation of the “wild type”. Seeds or plants from a “Straight species” grown in one section of the country, or one hilltop, may over years have evolved to have slighted different colors or patterns, so wild types are not all the same and contain variability. The distinction is far more complicated than this. Straight species plants will generally produce seeds with some similar and some different characteristics to their parent plant (just like we have some characteristics similar to our parents and siblings and not others). Many cultivars are sterile and may not produce seeds at all. If cultivars do produce viable seeds it is difficult to know by the label if they will have the same desirable characteristics of the mother plant or not. There are very real differences between Straight species and nativars/cultivars. The distinction may not matter to you, but it does matter to others.