When I posted those definitions on the 15th, I didn't know I was going to start a firestorm. I just thought that IF we are going to use certain terms to help define a plant, we need to use those botanical terms correctly. That is why I supplied a few terms and the source of those terms. I didn't intend to overwhelm anyone. I really don't care whether a plant is native, endemic, indigenous, non-indigenous or naturalized with the exception of perhaps cultivars. I just want to be able to identify it and know something about it. I would like to know, however, whether I am likely to encounter a plant out in the wild or more likely in a garden. If we are to have fun with the color threads without intimidating anyone, I suggest we drop the origins aspect . Ditto for submitting the plant ID to plant consultants for verification. If we think a submission is incorrectly identified, maybe a private e-mail sent to the originator with reasons why they should reconsider correcting the post would be in order.
Botanists with life-long careers in wildflower identification often disagree on the origins. How can we hope to decipher things that may confound them. Besides I thought we were here to have fun. One thing I have noticed about identification books for the general public is they usually don't include the origin of the plants. They do include:
The scientific names (Family, Genus and species).
Information, descriptions and size of flowers and leaves.
When they bloom.
How large the plant gets.
Whether the plant is an annual or perennial.
Sometimes the following information is included:
The names of plants with which they are likely to be confused are
included.
Soil preferences if there are any.
Interesting bits of information.
Gardening with Texas Native plants & Wildflowers. Part 7
A while back in another thread John referred to www.missouriplants.com. I bookmarked this website and really like the way it is organized and the information it includes about each plant. Perhaps it's only flaw is that it doesn't go into origin much more that to say "Native to US" or some other country. I would really like for us to be able to develop a similar body of information. I think the term "believed to be" native, naturalized, etc, should be acceptable. We can always reference TAMU or wildflower.org or even use "hearsay" when we can't find a published source. If we find conflicting information we can list it as such.
What I'd like to have, bottom line, is enough information to ID a plant I find growing in my yard or in the wild by looking at pictures and descriptions of size, etc. and to know what conditions it would need to thrive in my yard if I wanted to plant it there, such as soil type, moisture needs, will the deer or any other varmits eat it, pH requirements if out of the normal range, and in my case (and maybe only my case) whether it can tolerate salinity. Needless to say, I don't think you have to have all that information to post a picture but it would be nice to have a goal of eventually adding as much of the information as we can.
One last question - could we develop a database somewhere else and the link to it from the native plants lists that Josephine has started?
Surely the database is already there - in the PlantFiles? All it needs is a picture and a hyperlink in the colour thread. All the details could be put in the PF, there is plenty of room for personal comments there. Then the whole of DG could access all the info without ploughing (English spelling, sorry, plowing) through the Texas forum to find the information they need. After all most folk who are not locals wouldn't look here anyway. It isn't meant to be private or secret info after all and just because thes plants are Texas natives doesn't mean they don't and won't grow elsewhere..
If you put details in this forum as well, and something changes or is wrong both places would have to be updated. If you keep all the facts in the PF, only one set of data needs to be managed, and it does not waste the resources on Dave's servers by making them hold duplicate data.
I suspect you might notice an little of my former life here!! LOL (I am now retired but spent years as a database manager.)
okus, I have been worried about using up server space too because most of my photos are already posted in the PlantFiles. I, too, have an information systems background along with my education background. There are many, however, that I didn't post there because they were similar to other photos already posted. I usually do not add a lot of Texas specific information in my comments in the PlantFiles (such as the Texas regions in which the plant is natively found) and I find that I am more inclined to be a little more chatty in this forum.
I thought the whole purpose of these threads was to have a wonderful list of native and endemic native plants. It really is not that difficult to find out if most plants are one of these. I have found that by using the links that Josephine provided only a few have caused me any problems.
Josephine, I think that lily is Nymphaea mexicana:
http://hortiplex.gardenweb.com/plants/p1/gw1027205.html
This message was edited Jul 18, 2005 1:48 AM
for me looking being new to all this plantfiles does not give me a easy way to look for, search, and find a plant I see in the wild and is hard at best to use in finding a plant that is native to Texas for my yard... maybe the files could be changed a little to make natives standout better and native areas listed for most plants... just an idea to make them better...
Honestly, if I am looking for a native Texas flower or plant, one of my first stops is Josephines website..... For me, it's a good place to start. =D
Mel
This book might be useful for those interested. The price is right, too. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0804001499/ref=pd_sxp_f/002-8978997-1590463?v=glance&s=books
When I mapped vegetation in Alaska we used it has sort of a cheat sheet. Its good and not very technical.
John
Josephines site does help a lot - I have it bookmarked and reread through it before I go out and look at plants in the area.... still so many that I have no idea what or when or where....
Thank you Everybody, for your encouragment and support. I love Texas native plants, I do care about them, and I an not about to quit. I guess right now we are going through what might be considered labor pains, we are giving birth to a new project and new ways, but when it is all done, I think that a good thing will have come of it.
I will try to post the result of the vote today, although it appears that it is not very important any more.
Josephine.
Mitch, I am having the same problem myself, with a bunch of books, and access to a lot of imformation, and still I don't know about this lily. Well, I do know the name, Nymphea Mexicana, Hazel told me, but I haven't seen anywhere whether it is native to Texas or not. I do know that it is native to Florida, and that they grow it on the Rio Grand valley, but no one has said if it is native to Texas also.
The funny thing is I took the picture at the Wildflower Center, so we all have our problems.
Josephine.
Hazel, thank you for identifying the lily for me, do you know if it is native? I have looked and can not come up with anything conclusive. The wildflower center doesn't even have it listed, go figure.
If it is , I will use it to start the Aquatics thread, If not, I dont have any other good picture of native aquatics. If you have a good one could you email it to me and I will use it to start the thread.
I will be sure to mention that it is your picture.
Also it just ocurred to me that we might want to have one thread for Grasses ornamental and others since some of the grasses are quite beautiful, and some very despised, but still, they all serve their purpose. I need a good picture of of a native ornamental grass too.
Josephine.
I have a yellow dock that when it blooms I can add to the water list.. I think it is a Texas Native - at least I bought it and it had the native tag attached! I have tried to look it up in my books and online but same thing I know US native but nothing says Texas .... hard to tell - anyone know?
Josephine, http://www.wildflower2.org/NPIN/Plants/Distribution_Detail.asp?Scientific_Name=Nymphaea%20odorata
It appears that it is a noxious weed in California!
Thank you John, I had looked at the wildflower center already but what happened was that I had misspelled the first part of the name, and of course it didnt come up. My fault. Well as they say !never mind!
So it is native ans I can use it, but I still need the ornamental grass picture
Hazel, sorry to bother you, and thank you for the name. I still need the grass picture.
Josephine.
Dear Friends, Dave has given an answer, and our Sticky, will not stick.
May be someone else can convince him. This is what transpired.
Josephine.
Begin forwarded message:
From: dave
Date: July 17, 2005 3:00:01 PM CDT
To: "frostweed"
Subject: Re: [DG-528123] Can you please make this a Sticky?
Dear Josephine,
The forums were not really ever intended to be for databasing plants
and pictures, etc. We would very much prefer to keep this kind of
purpose elsewhere.
Is the PlantFiles not suitable for what you are wanting to do? How
about using your Garden Diary?
Happy Gardening
dave
On Jul 11, 2005 2:32 PM:
Dear Terry,
The purpose of the thread is to have our native plants pictures easily
accessible for plant ID.
As you know, if a thread is not active for a few days it disappears
from the first page and people might not know it is there.
Of course we still intend to post our pictures on the plant files, and
in fact we will provide a link to the plant files from the picture
so that as much information as possible may be obtained.
That way, if someone has a flower or plant, and they don't know what
it is, they can go to the thread for that particular color and
possibly find it. For example, if someone has a plant with blue
flowers he can go to the thread for blue and find it there.
We just thought it would be neat, and hope we will be
allowed to do it.
Josephine.
On Jul 11, 2005, at 1:43 PM, Terry wrote:
Dear frostweed,
Hi, Josephine! Dave's not available right now, so I scooped this one
up. I'm not sure I understand the purpose of the thread in your
link...it seems to more or less duplicate PlantFiles (I realize
you're placing only TX natives in your thread, but we really
encourage people to post their plant images to PF so that everyone
can benefit from them. A comment about a plant's native
habitat/provenance is also great to add there (although
I'll warn you that this subject can be somewhat controversial and
contentious; not everyone will agree on where a plant's native range
begins and ends
Happy Gardening
Terry
Can you please make this a Sticky?
On Jul 11, 2005 1:22 PM:
Dear Dave, we think that having this directory would help
tremendously in finding and sharing Native Plant
information, If you can do this for us, we would be very grateful.
Thank you,
Josephine Keeney.
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/528122/
This is how the vote is shaping up.
Of the 21 people I sent the email to which were the ones that at some point have posted on our thread, this is the result.
No response 6
Abstained-----3
Cultivars Yes 11 No 1
Naturalized Yes 11 No 1
So there you have it, may be we should wait to call it done.
What do you all think?
Josephine.
Josephine,
I think if you requested an extra line in the PF to show where the plant was native to, that was also available to search on, you might get a more favourable response from Dave.
The PF really is the place to collect all info on every plant, if you could search on Texas Native, and then colour, wouldn't that achieve what you wanted?
Dave has always said he didn't want regional forums to be an exclusive club, or to interfere with sharing with the whole membership. We in Texas are lucky to have one at all. I think that is why he has rejected your request.
plant files will need more work to make them function the way you would need to look up natives then that - we would need native states or each plant, and more flexability to be able to search - sometimes it is hard to know the size even listed in the plantfiles when you have issues with finding a young plant, larger then normal one or the like. A lot of states are gaining their own forums - we have things we are looking for in plants here in Texas that most of the other gardeners are not interested in or dont have to worry about... Josephine lets just keep the posts the way they are and the one with the list of colors and plant types we can bump every few days. . . At least that is my two cents!
I have thought that for the time being untill the directory is done we can leave it as is and bump it once in a while, but it has ocurred to me that when we start a new Gardening with Texas plants and Wildflowers part 8 I can make the directory the fist post on the thread and keep doing that all along so we will allways have it current and available. What do you guys think?
We shall see about asking Dave for an extra line on the plant files , I will have to get some feedback. Josephine.
I think Okus is right that we should request an extra line in the database to reflect a plant's origins. Although I have don't find the format particularly user friendly (perhaps because of my lack of knowledge about species, genus, etc.), I do appreciate the vast amount of work that many, including Hazel, have done and it does seem only right to add to their efforts rather than going off on our own.... I know, I know. I'm contradicting what I said earlier but a girl still has a right to change her mind, doesn't she?
I would like knowing a plants origins, too. What a great idea!
This is still the problem for ignorant people like me to be able to find that information. I find a plant growing in my yard and I don't know where it came from, and no one can ID the plant, then what? Lost in the plant world.
trois
This message was edited Jul 19, 2005 6:58 AM
I think that we need to include these in the Texas native plant threads because someone may recognize it. If we don't at least get it out there, then we'll never get an id for it. Who knows - you may find something new and we can stick troisiana at the end...
LOL. That would be something.
trois
Josephine, I have a native grass photo somewhere ... I am looking for it. I will send it to you when and if I locate it.
Yep, a native grass category would be useful, too!
Josephine, I am sending you a photo of vanilla grass, Indian grass, holy grass (Hierochloe odorata). I received the plant last year from a Native American who lives in Georgia. It is a native here as well and is a valued prairie grass.
This message was edited Jul 19, 2005 11:29 AM
I counted over 30 blossoms on my jimsonweed tonight and at least two bees in every blossom! Wonder what jimsonweed honey would taste like!
Linda, that is so neat, aren't these plants fun? It is all such a wonder, and discovering new things keeps us alert and excited, I love it!
Carry on my friend!
Josephine.
Veronica! What a surptise I had yesterday. I received your neat package of seeds.
There were the Woolly- white, the Black-eyed Susan, and the very special one
Herbertia lahue, I will do my best to help them to do their best, Thank you very much.
I know that you have some really neat pictures of the Herbertia and Woolly-white, it would be nice if you posted those on the color threads, I thont think they are there yet.
Josephine.
Kipper2, I also had a surprise from you, the lovely bicolor Columbine seeds, I hope I can get them to grow as tall and beautiful as yours were. Thank you very much.
Josephine.
I don't know if this has happened to any of you. Last September I took some cuttings from my tall Purple Mexican petunia, and rooted them in a cup. You probably know that they root in about a week to 10 days, so everything was going well. I did not have a chance to plant then all in the garden before frost, so I left them in the cups, there were about 6 of them left.
Through the winter they died down to the soil level, and were very slow to come from the roots in the spring. What is so unusual is that when they finally came up, they came up as Wild Petunia, the leaves were rounded, not like the long pointed leaves of the Mexican petunia.
So now I am wondering if the Mexican petunia is a cultivar of the Wild petunia and it reverted to it's original form.
Do any of you know? I sure would like to find out, I had never seen a plant revert from a cutting.
Josephine.
We had talked about Wildscapes and whether they need to be really wild.
These are few views of our well behaved Wildscape.
Front view of the house and yard.
This message was edited Jul 20, 2005 2:02 PM
Side view with our beautiful Arizona Ash tree 36 years old planted by us.
At the time I knew nothing about native plants, and very little about gardening, so we went to the nursery and told them we wanted a shade tree that would grow fast and be prettty. They said take this one, and so far so good. I wish we had gotten a Pecan or an Oak, but too late now.
This is part of the garden at the back of the yard. I call this area my meditation garden because I like ti sit here amomg the plants and contemplate on the beauty of native plants, Lovely, do you agree?
A group of Sunflowers where the garlic used to be. These are volunteers, but they sure look pretty.
The wildflower slope on July 15th, looking good!
A closer view of the flowers on the slope.
My oh my! Your flowers are all in bloom! We may have to run by to get an updated view of what's blooming!
=D
Mel
Here is a pic of my first Datura. This nite there were 19 blooms open. On monday night, I had 29 blooms open. I think that she is very happy where it is!
