Re: Question About Natives

**y*@sfo.com**

At 9:41 PM -0400 8/10/07, Dan Clost wrote:
>....Which of the various native characteristics were "improved" and why?
>....

"Why" is the same for natives and nonnatives: so that they can be 
grown in our gardens. To adapt to gardens, most plants need to look 
presentable, play nicely with all the other plants, and put up with 
the conditions in the garden. If you're interested in replicating the 
ecological niche, that's called ecological restoration, not a garden.

Many of the cultivars (named selections) of California native plants 
are more suited to small suburban gardens because they lack the 
genetic variability of the species and thus have a more predictable 
(and smaller) size and a more regular form. Some are more tolerant of 
garden conditions (overspray from sprinklers, amended soils, etc.). 
Some have been chosen for flower color.

For example, coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica) is a well-behaved and 
widely adaptable evergreen shrub, but too large for most gardens, so 
the selections have been getting smaller: the first one was 8-10 ft. 
tall and wide, the next one was 5 ft., and there is now a smaller one 
(but as it is grown out in a range of gardens, we'll find out if it 
reliably stays small).

Many manzanitas, one of California's iconic plants, are hard to grow 
in gardens because they are native to dry, rocky slopes. Cultivars 
that do tolerate garden conditions, such as Howard McMinn manzanita, 
are the ones that are most common in gardens.

Heucheras have been hybridized to get showier flowers. Some are 
hybrids of the Calif. native H. elegans and the Arizona native C. 
sanguinea.

I've heard landscape architects say that a garden with plants all 
from one part of the world has a certain harmony. What you get with a 
native garden is not only an island of habitat for the native birds 
and bees, but also a garden that looks like, say, California instead 
of "anywhere."
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