permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On 12/26/04 12:11 PM, "Clint Popetz" <clint@cpopetz.com> wrote:

> I am by no means a natives-only evangelist.

Sorry, Clint. I sometimes forget that most people on this list, unlike some
I run into elsewhere, have a pretty enlightened view of natives/exotics
issues. Bioregion is also important in determining whether a plant will be
problematical. I meet lots of transplants (human) to the Northwest from New
England and the Southwest US who are utterly freaked about Russian olive,
but out here it does not seem to be invasive--I suspect it does not like the
long dry summers. And it's soil-building qualities are stellar.

I also make a distinction between plants (and animals) that can spread via
seeds or other easily and widely dispersed propagules, and those that can't.
Plants like Bamboo and Jerusalem artichoke may be very hard to get rid of,
but just about the only way they will arrive in the first place is if a
person plants them there, so they are almost incapable of extending their
range without deliberate planting by humans. This seems to me to place them
in a different, much less worrisome class than seed- (and thus animal- or
wind-) dispersed species, that doesn't warrant the term invasive. Rampant,
sure, but not invasive.

I find Mollison's classification a useful one: first use a native if it will
do the job, but if not (and if you want food, not many will in the US), a
tested exotic, then, finally, a small trial of an untested exotic.

Toby