Tag: reply

@allymaerusso replied to your post “botanyshitposts:
tumble dot hell is wild and i am So Weary so here’s…”

@kihaku-gato I’m confused why continuing to produce this species is necessarily a bad thing if the nurseries u say are propagating by seed, cutting, or grafting they’re able to reproduce the species and keep the rest in their natural habitat. Why not buy a bunch from a a nursery and just transplant them in their native region?

Producing a plant species in nurseries is not a bad thing. I meant that as in that is how it’s relieving pressure from the wild populations. That is a good thing (it’s part of why I myself am working on producing Jack-in-the-pulpit in my home nursery. It’s so that the demand to poach such a species drops, as poaching is becoming a thing in the more southerly counties of my region). I was meaning those who say appreciating a beautiful plants species MUST mean it’s being promoted to be poached are off the mark.

As for “buying nursery stock to reintroduce into the wild”, that is its own can of worms that I myself think would not be able to entirely elaborate on but I’ll try my best;

 There is a class of nursery production known as Landscape Restoration wherein the production of the plants is for the purpose of reintroducing/reestablishing into the wilds, this style of production works a little differently from normal nursery production; the plants to a degree are given a pedigree. One has to document where their parentage comes from; Where the seed/cuttings come from (often the info the nursery will provide will be either an ecoregion or an address). St. Williams Nursery in southern Ontario is an infamous example of a Landscape Restoration Nursery.

At its bare-bones landscape restoration nurseries work this way is for Genetic Diversity reasons. Let’s use Cucumber Magnolia for this format; it’s endangered in Ontario, but common/widespread in the eastern american states. Why grab Cucumber Magnolias from a Landscape Restoration nursery vs just any nursery to reintroduce them (who would care? who would know?)? Yet again pedigree comes into play; Non-landscape restorative nursuries can/could be american imports which are genetically distinct from Ontarian Magnolias, so you’re risking genetic pollution between the two, and american Magnolias are not as adapted to Ontario’s odd winters compared to Magnolias which have been growing for generations in this ecoregion, so you risk killing the remaining trees through that genetic pollution.

In the case of a species that is outright extinct in the wild, reintroduction is through nursery stock is less of a concern (still can be concerns but I don’t have much energy to elaborate on the varying factoids); you don’t need to worry as much about genetic pollution, just getting them established/naturalized. in the case of where a species is endangered not extinct, this is a bit trickier to decide (though similar questions arise even when reintroducing a plant which has become extinct); is the species being produced by the nursery for the purpose of reintroduction, or is it being produced with the primary intent of hobbyists/gardeners to grow the plant? The former the plants will be produced with the intent of maximizing genetic diversity to make them the most adaptable to reintroduction, the latter though the plants will be often bred the opposite direction (bred for conformity and genetic similarity, often via selective breeding or vegetative propagation) which means they deviate from their wild cousins; they bring with them the potential of polluting the adaptability of the existing wild populations (especially if the introduced plants outnumber the wild endangered specimens), bringing in weaknesses to diseases/pests that their wild equivalents are more resistant to vs their domestic introductions, they may even be bred in such a way that they cannot mesh with the ecosystem the same way due to the deviation from the wild species’ gene pool.

My eyes are overloading from the text so I’ll stop here. But in conclusion; 

TLDR; Nursery Production of plants is a good thing, however using nursery produced plants to reestablish wild/endangered populations of plants is not a good idea if that is not what the Nursery is growing the plants for. Reintroducing plants from the wild should be kept to the professionals and the volunteers that are with the professionals.