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Wildflowers: Native plants provide beauty
What if every landscape looked the same?
Ugh, how boring.
That’s why communities need to work harder to preserve their native plant species, such as wildflowers, so every region can better retain its unique look, national plant experts say.
“We want Iowa to look like Iowa, Texas to look like Texas and Minnesota to look like Minnesota,” said Daryl Smith, the director of the Tallgrass Prairie Center and a biology professor at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. “If we homogenize everything, there’s no uniqueness to your particular area.”
In Iowa, prairie flowers are the “national treasure” that Smith said his program researches and tries to preserve.
When the state was settled, it was about 80 percent covered by prairie. In the past 150 years or so, however, most of that prairie has been converted to agricultural land.
“We have a very tiny amount of original prairie left, and, in the process, we’ve lost most of the flowers that were in the prairie,” he said. “Now, we have just scattered remnants around the state.”
The center helps encourage Iowa counties to plant native prairie species along its roadsides and then leave it alone instead of mowing down grass and other weeds that tend to grow there. It saves on state labor and equipment costs, he said.
“Plus the fact that these species are well-adapted to this particular environment,” he added.
“We focus mostly on prairie wildflowers, but all of the native flowers in any of the states are under some degree of stress, just from the changes we’ve made to change the landscape to make it more suitable for humans.”
But for some, the wild look of prairie plantings is less attractive than the “highly manicured” lawns they are used to, he said.
Those people should consider several benefits of planting wildflowers, said Damon Waitt, director of the Native Plant Information Network — a huge database of native plants the public can access online — at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas.
He said wildflowers provide:
n Ecological benefits — They produce oxygen and sequester carbon dioxide, helping with climate change and providing food and shelter for wildlife.
“And because native plants are adapted to their particular eco-region, they typically provide better ecosystem services than introduced plants,” Waitt said. “They also help clean our water. They take water into their plant bodies and transpire it out through their leaves, and it goes into the atmosphere in a cleaner version.”
n Economic value — When you garden or landscape or beautify your highways using native plants, you can usually achieve some economic savings. They don’t need to look manicured, so people will spend less time mowing or trimming.
“They typically don’t require the addition of pesticides and fertilizers and all the costs associated with those chemicals,” he said. “That’s good for the environment as well.”
n Aesthetic value — Native plants provide “a sense of place or a regional identity” that cannot be replaced, and they are beautiful, Waitt said.
Kay Luna is a reporter for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, kluna@qctimes.com.
LEARN MORE
Want to learn more about wildflowers native to your community?
Go online to wildflower.org/plants, a national database run by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, which offers an interactive look at which plant species might grow best where you live.
What if every landscape looked the same?
Ugh, how boring.
That’s why communities need to work harder to preserve their native plant species, such as wildflowers, so every region can better retain its unique look, national plant experts say.
“We want Iowa to look like Iowa, Texas to look like Texas and Minnesota to look like Minnesota,” said Daryl Smith, the director of the Tallgrass Prairie Center and a biology professor at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. “If we homogenize everything, there’s no uniqueness to your particular area.”
In Iowa, prairie flowers are the “national treasure” that Smith said his program researches and tries to preserve.
When the state was settled, it was about 80 percent covered by prairie. In the past 150 years or so, however, most of that prairie has been converted to agricultural land.
“We have a very tiny amount of original prairie left, and, in the process, we’ve lost most of the flowers that were in the prairie,” he said. “Now, we have just scattered remnants around the state.”
The center helps encourage Iowa counties to plant native prairie species along its roadsides and then leave it alone instead of mowing down grass and other weeds that tend to grow there. It saves on state labor and equipment costs, he said.
“Plus the fact that these species are well-adapted to this particular environment,” he added.
“We focus mostly on prairie wildflowers, but all of the native flowers in any of the states are under some degree of stress, just from the changes we’ve made to change the landscape to make it more suitable for humans.”
But for some, the wild look of prairie plantings is less attractive than the “highly manicured” lawns they are used to, he said.
Those people should consider several benefits of planting wildflowers, said Damon Waitt, director of the Native Plant Information Network — a huge database of native plants the public can access online — at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas.
He said wildflowers provide:
n Ecological benefits — They produce oxygen and sequester carbon dioxide, helping with climate change and providing food and shelter for wildlife.
“And because native plants are adapted to their particular eco-region, they typically provide better ecosystem services than introduced plants,” Waitt said. “They also help clean our water. They take water into their plant bodies and transpire it out through their leaves, and it goes into the atmosphere in a cleaner version.”
n Economic value — When you garden or landscape or beautify your highways using native plants, you can usually achieve some economic savings. They don’t need to look manicured, so people will spend less time mowing or trimming.
“They typically don’t require the addition of pesticides and fertilizers and all the costs associated with those chemicals,” he said. “That’s good for the environment as well.”
n Aesthetic value — Native plants provide “a sense of place or a regional identity” that cannot be replaced, and they are beautiful, Waitt said.
Kay Luna is a reporter for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, kluna@qctimes.com.
LEARN MORE
Want to learn more about wildflowers native to your community?
Go online to wildflower.org/plants, a national database run by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, which offers an interactive look at which plant species might grow best where you live.
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