If you’ve spent any time around plant enthusiasts or garden centers, you may have noticed native plants are all the rage. Perhaps it’s because the familiar monarch butterfly caterpillar can only feed on our milkweeds, an emotional love/hate relationship we have with our lawns, or a very doable call to action amidst myriad environmental concerns.
Native plants are those found growing naturally in a given area, pre-European settlement, as evidenced from botanical specimens in herbaria, written narratives, and scientific records. Ohio has thousands of species including trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants like ferns, grasses, and flowers that originally occurred in a largely forested environment, with few Native American cultivated openings. Glaciers shaped the Midwest, leaving unique niches and exposing various layers of bedrock within hills and caverns, streams and lakes, and flat deposits. The diversity in habitats allowed many different species to grow under varying conditions- so while sourwood, purple coneflower, and horsetail are all native to Ohio, they will not be located together.
