Plant Files

Is it possible to add to the general information on each plant in the Plant Files a section that gives the origin of the plant? I'm always looking for native plants and this would be a big help. Just the general entry of Native to: China would be great. I suppose this could be tricky when a plant, like azalea, is native to different countries depending on the specific plant.
If it could be more specific, Native to: North America, Northeast, that would be even better. There is that grey area where plants are cultivars and not technically native but that could be solved by just noting in the specific listings the plant is a cultivar not species.

We've talked about it several times over the years, but I'm afraid adding native ranges isn't in the works.

In a nutshell, PlantFiles is international, so trying to specify nativity (or provenance) means we'd have to create a list of places where a plant is native to.

1) If we did it at the continent level, that would be a manageable list of 6 or 7 (depending on who's counting) options to choose from - but it's such general information, it's not particularly helpful information. (Not to mention there's contention and controversy around who gets to claim - or take the blame - for certain plants ;o)

2) If we use geo-political (i.e., country) boundaries to define ranges, then we suddenly have a long checklist (192 countries.)

And for large countries (Canada, US, Mexico to name three) - even knowing a plant is native to one of those countries is still far too general to be useful information. For example, a plant that's native to Florida is not necessarily native to even the adjacent states, let alone to the temperate zones further north.

People are free to add info like that in the comments section if they know it--many plants it's hard to track down the exact origin of a plant but if you do happen to know it for a certain plant then add it there. There are much better resources than PF if you're looking for plants that are native to your area--I bet NJ has a native plant society or website of some sort that will have information, and there are probably some books out there too, I have at least 3-4 books just on CA native plants, I would imagine there are similar things published for the Northeast.