Comment 24869

By highwater (registered) | Posted June 03, 2008 at 09:55:31

"There are also many garden flowers that propagate themselves easily by seed. Why not try some of these? (I hope that Doesn't make them weeds.)"

I'm not an expert, but I have a native plant garden and have been studying native plants for several years now. ( Lorraine Johnson's New Ontario Naturalized Garden is my bible - highly recommended if you don't have it already.) From everything that I have read, I would define a weed as an invasive non-native plant ie. a plant that should not be there not because we don't want it there, but because Mother Nature never intended it to be there. Because they are highly adaptive and have no natural competitors in their new ecosystems, they can take over and create monocultures which represent a loss of biodiversity, loss of animal habitat, and leave our natural areas weakened, etc, etc. I'm sure you already know alot of this stuff. Examples of weeds then, are garlic mustard, burdock, purple loosetrife, celandine or small wort, and Norway Maples, to name a few.

As for your question about Echinacea purpurea, it is native to North America, but only the pale purple coneflower is native to Ontario. Most Ontario native plant experts give it a pass though, because of it's beauty. Because of its popularity, there are many cultivated varieties that bear little resemblance to their native forebear, so you should only purchase it from a native plant nursery. As for its 'weed' status, I would only call it a weed if one of the cultivated varieties escaped to a natural area and crowded out the native variety. Since cultivars don't usually propogate as aggressively, that's unlikely.

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