I should add a little story about how this simplified pabulum is being
fed to people. I was attending some MG class and the speaker said, "You
can never know whether a plant will become invasive, so you should plant
only..." And a whole room full of zombs said in unison, "...natives."
Unfortunately our native plant palette here in the PNW is very limited,
and most of them are of no real use to me, since it's mainly a land of
towering fir trees, so I won't be on board with this dumbing down.
The definition of "weed" has changed over the years. It used to be, and
still is (for me) "any unwanted plant." Oh darn, there I go again with
my human-centered, and not earth-centered, ethos!
But in botany class I learned a new definition. Weeds are plants that
specialize in growing in disturbed areas. This is interesting. It
means that a native or non-native might be a weed, or not, depending on
context. So poison oak is not a weed when kept in check by shading in
old-growth forests, but becomes a weed at the edge of the cleared area,
ultimately because it was disturbed. Oops! Doesn't this lay the blame
on the timber companies for creating the disturbance that led to weeds
in the first place?
So under the new definition of "weed", the timber companies escape blame
entirely, and we're the ones at fault for planting "non-natives." I
guess this is the consolation prize given to timber companies by the
radical pseudo-environmentalists to atone for past bad relations. It's
a concession that costs nothing except to plant enthusiasts and nursery
people, and they're already probably voting liberal, so there appears to
be no risk to those brilliant strategists who come up with this crap.
The deal to kiss the chemical companies' arses will come later when they
insist that we remove existing "non-natives".
Why do I sense, though, that this need to reinforce the idea that
"natives have a 'right' to be here, and non-natives don't" has nothing
really to do with plants?
Bill
S. Oregon coast
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