Natives vs. exotics
The choice between native plants and exotic plants is a perennial gardening topic.
“Exotic” when applied to people and most objects means very different, strange, or unusual; when applied to plants, it generally means coming from another country.
When thinking about gardens, this distinction becomes fuzzy. For eons, plants have used myriad strategies to relocate in new places, with help from winds, waves or birds. In addition, for hundreds of years, plant hunters have brought plants across oceans to markets where the plants either expired, naturalized after a few generations, or found their new environs to be acceptable.
Some of these newcomers liked their new “digs” a lot and flourished with such vigor that they became invasive bullies of the preexisting vegetation. A seasonal example is the “Bermuda buttercup (Oxalis pes-caprae), from South Africa.
Most home gardens include plants from other countries. Familiar examples include roses, most of which have Asian origins, irises from the Middle East, eucalyptuses from Australia, aloes from Africa, and countless others.
While all plants are native to someplace, those that are native to a particular place are best regarded as the firstcomers. They have become well adapted to that place but are neither the optimal nor the divinely chosen occupants of that location.
Just as a plant’s “native” status could change over time, the concept of “exotic plants” could apply to both foreign imports and plants that are native to a given part of the world. Even California native plants could seem exotic to some California gardeners. About 6,500 species, subspecies, and varieties of plants occur naturally in this state, and many are found nowhere else in the world. It is easy for a gardener encounter an unusual or strange California native.
In a recent New York Times article, Margaret Roach skirted the “native vs. exotic” issue by encouraging gardeners to bring “specialty” plants to their gardens rather than