Cultivars when you go native?

When you go native with your planting, what are your thoughts on cultivars? Do you seek out the straight, unmodified species or do you welcome a native cultivar that might have better foliage, flowering habits, etc?

I'm going to plant a North American natives bed in the front of my house: it gets full sun all day and is exceptionally dry. I've got a good list of straight species, but some cultivars would bring me a little more variety. I just haven't decided yet if I consider a cultivar a native =)

I think it's really a personal choice, but you might want to research how the cultivar came into existence to decide if you're comfortable with a particular one or not. If it's a plant that came about in nature that had some sort of desirable characteristic that made people want to propagate and sell it then I would still consider it a native (for example, out here there are species that are somewhat variable in the wild, so they'll get cultivar names based on the location they were originally found...those I would definitely consider native). But if it's something that is a hybrid between a native species and a non-native one then I wouldn't. And it also depends on your reasons for wanting to grow natives--if it's just because you want something that will be well adapted to your environment and not need tons of extra water, etc then I wouldn't worry as much about whether it's a named cultivar or not, or how the cultivar came to be. But if your purpose in planting a native garden is to attract native birds, bees, etc then it pays to make sure it's something that would actually be found in nature, otherwise it may not make as good a habitat for them.

I recently saw a Desert Willow that is prettier than the one I have already. I definitely want it. I think it's called 'Bubba'. I don't like the hybrids between a native and a nonnative, but a selection or cultivar of a native is fine with me.

Linda, that is absolutely beautiful! My lot is already chock full of trees, otherwise I'd be tempted to see if that would grow in my 7b/8a microclimate =)

Ecrane, I'm gearing towards natives mainly because I think it's a more responsible way to garden, if that makes sense. I don't want my 'pretties' to be a drain on resources, and my area has been under drought conditions for years. The last thing I want is to plant 100 sq ft of exotics that will require more water than my husband and I use combined! I'm also a natural method/organic gardener and I think natives will have a better chance of thriving (not just surviving) under those conditions.

My tradelist contains 66 NA native species that I'm eyeballing right now (pulled from the WildFlower.org list of recommended plants for my area). Dork that I am, I put them all in a spreadsheet along with their PlantFiles data so I can sort them by sun and water requirements to get a list of what will grow well in what part of my yard, and I'll have the color and bloom information for that grouping. Here's the list of what I have for that dry, sunny front bed:

Creeping Phlox - Phlox subulata 6 Magenta | fuschia | violet | white mid spring evergreen
Phlox - Phlox douglasii 6 magenta | fuschia | violet | white mid spring evergreen
Western Coneflower - Echinacea angustifolia 18-36 Pink | violet | white mid summer – mid fall
Butterfly Weed - Asclepias tuberosa 24-36 orange mid summer – early fall Self-sowing
Desert Lantana - Lantana achyranthifolia 24-36 Pink | white repeater aromatic foliage
Horsemint - Monarda punctata 24-48 Pink | yellow | lavender mid summer – early fall aromatic foliage
Snowbrush - Ceanothus velutinus 24-84 white mid summer – early fall Evergreen & aromatic foliage
Cherokee Bean - Erythrina herbacea per 36-48 red late winter – early spring

Yes, I've also arranged them by height so I could try to envision what everything would look like =) At any rate, this combo puts me heavily on the pink side, which is ok but not thrilling to me. Other coneflowers and lantanas would give me more orange and yellow, but I'm trying to stick with the low water needs and those are marked as 'average'. And hence my quandry about the cultivars...

You both make a very good point about considering whether a cutlivar is a hybrid of a native and non-native. I'm sure that is occasionally included in PlantFiles, but if it's not, where would you recommend researching such information?

As an aside, Lantana does not need a lot of water, I have some of them in my non-native garden areas and they do just fine without a ton of summer water. I think in a climate like yours where you get at least 2 or 3 times as much annual rainfall as I do, they would be absolutely fine. But Lantana camara and Lantana montevidensis which are the two most common species available in the trade are not North American natives (any of the cultivars you're finding at the local garden center are about 99% for sure one of those two species unless the nursery specializes in native plants) I don't believe coneflowers need a ton of water either, although I'll be planting them this winter for the first time so I don't have any personal experience on them yet.

As far as finding info on cultivars--Google is always another place to check, depending on how much info is out there though sometimes you might have to dig through tons of search results so sometimes you just have to use judgement. A few tips that may help you--if it's a genus where there are not very many species, then typically you can feel pretty good about cultivars. An example in my area is Chilopsis linearis, I think that's about the only Chilopsis species that is ever found in the trade, so it's a pretty good bet that the named cultivars are just selections that were made for pretty flower color, etc and they weren't crossed with some other species. Also if the cultivar has a species name listed with it, that should mean it's just crosses between things in that species so again you can feel better. Yesterday I bought Erigeron glaucus 'Olga', and since it specifically calls it E. glaucus rather than just labeling it Erigeron 'Olga', I can be more confident that the only parentage involved is Erigeron glaucus which is a native species. Here in California too there will often be cultivars named after where they were found--some of our native species are somewhat variable and will look a little different depending on where they were found. So for example I have Solanum xanti 'Salmon Creek', that name tells me it's a native species that was found in the Salmon Creek area (there are other Solanum xanti cultivars with other location names). And lastly, you can investigate the origins of a genus itself--if all coneflowers are native to North America for example, then you could feel good about any coneflower you pick. Wikipedia (although potentially not 100% accurate) is a decent place to try for the origin of a genus, they'll often mention that there are species in the genus native to what areas of the world.

Also, are you sure you clicked on South Carolina on the wildflower.org website? Or did you just search for things that liked dry conditions and full sun? Some of the plants you listed looked like choices that might be more appropriate in the west than they would be for SC, so I went to the website out of curiosity and some of the species they list for SC are not the ones you have listed above--for example, you listed Western Coneflower Echiacea angustifolia, but on the website I see Echiacea purpurea the eastern coneflower, which makes a lot more sense to me as one that would be good for SC. And desert lantana also doesn't show up on their list for SC. I didn't check the others, but those two for sure didn't look quite right to me. The trouble with trying to grow western or desert native species in SC is that you get too much rain for them to be truly happy, they might do fine for a season or two but they'll tend to be shorter lived than if you got a species that was native to a slightly wetter area. I'd recommend on any plant that you're looking at, go to its listing on wildflower.org and see what states it naturally occurs in. If they're all out west or have a very different climate than you do, then that plant may not be the best choice for your garden. But if it occurs in the southeast, then it's a much better bet. I'm not trying to talk you into only growing things native to your area, but given your goal of things that will thrive with minimal care, things that are native to AZ and NM (as is the case with the desert Lantana) are not going to do as well for you in the long term. And in the case of Echinacea angustifolia, its native distribution goes from Saskatchewan down to Texas, again not exactly in your part of the country, vs Echinacea purpurea's native distribution goes from Florida up to Ohio and out to Texas, so SC is right in the middle of its distribution which means you have a much better chance of success with that one instead.

Ecrane, you bring up very valid points. Regarding the lantana: I've been avoiding camara like the plague, and it's the only thing available locally. Very frustrating!

My search at wildflower.org was two-fold: first checking recommended natives for SC and second checking recommended natives that are recommended alternatives for invasives. Unfortunately, I didn't seem to keep track of which was which in my spreadsheet (doh!).

With that said, take a look at the US calculated soil moisture percentages for the most recent week
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/soilmst/img/curr.w.rank.daily.gif

I live in upstate SC right by the number one. For the past 3 months we're at 25% of our 'normal' precipitation levels, and we've been under drought conditions for 8 of the past 9 years, I believe. It's been going on so long that the water table levels are significantly affected, and what little rainfall we have been getting have yet to be able to makeup for a decade of shortfall, so soil moisture levels continue to decrease even during the rare months we get 'normal' rainfall. Even normal is a relative term: according to the National Climatic Data Center my area has been decreasing in rainfall an average of 1.2mm per day since around 1970.

That ongoing drought combined with the fact that this particular bed gets all day sun (which increases the temps and water evap above normal) is why I had included so many extremely drought tolerant plants. The only things I water are my veg, herbs, and 6 potted plants. Nothing that goes in the ground gets watered except transplants, not even my roses and camillias.

Either way it's too late to plant for this particular season. I've still got to get a backhoe in to get the tree roots out of this spot, so I'll just have to keep an eye on the water levels between now and late winter...

Here's another kind of soil-moisture based drought map. It's bad here. Not as bad as 2006...yet.
http://www.fs.fed.us/land/wfas/kbdi.gif

Thank Linda, I'm delving into that site now!

I'd also look and see if you can find out what your annual rainfall numbers are looking like over the last couple years--even a drought year in an area like yours that would "normally" get 50-ish inches of rain per year could still be more rainfall than some western native xeric plants like, especially if your soil is at all on the clay side. If you're under 30 inches of rain per year now and have really good drainage I expect they'd be fine, at least for as long as your drought continues (although if the rains ever go back to normal then I expect they won't stick around)

Man, looking this up is depressing =/

We've had 4 inches of rainfall the past 3 months, YTD precip is about 10 inches.

Editing to add: 99 was 36, 2000 was 35, 2001 was 41. Still trying to find the past few years...

And here's a shot of the dirt in this bed. I almost type soil, but I really don't think the term applies... At any rate, for whatever reason most of my front yard is sand on top of clay, but this particular bed is raised and is pretty much all sandy and highly decomposed leaf rot (at least what I've been digging up). There was a giant oak tree here we had to take down (hit by lightening), so everything underneath is actually pretty loose, rather than compacted down.

This message was edited Jun 28, 2008 3:33 PM

The nearest city to us, San Antonio, is still under 4 inches for the year. We're probably about the same or maybe a little more. 2005 and 2006 was drought years..in 2007 all heck broke loose in the summer, then in September the drought returned. La Nina...wish she'd go somewhere else to live....preferably out in the middle of the ocean somewhere. I think caliche is the worst soil there is for most plants. It just out and out kills so many plants.

tinabeana

I have also decided to plant mostly natives.My reasons are also because of drought conditions in the Carolinas and because it is more environmentally responsible to grow natives and not lastly they need so much less attention.

I recently joined the SC native plant society.There isn't a chapter in my area but I get lots of information online.They also have many learning opportunities at Clemson.There is a very active chapter in your area and you may be interested in finding out about it.

Thanks downscale. I've been working my way through the Clemson websites getting more and more information. I've also got the SC native plant society bookmarked somewhere. Keyword being somewhere =)

I've been reviewing the Clemson xeriscaping PDF http://www.clemson.edu/hort/pdf/Xeriscape.pdf Several of my low-water needs plants (listed above) are on the list, as are many of the plants I have listed as "average water needs" (which I haven't listed but is about twice as large and contains many of the alternative species you suggested, ecrane).

However, I wanted had to share that this document is 17 years old, and about 25% of the documents suggestions are now on other lists as invasive plants that are discouraged for homeowners. How very frustrating...

Here's what I suspect is some more recent info from Clemson http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/hgic1717.htm http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/hgic1724.htm

I'd definitely check out the SC native plant society site too, I'm sure they either have lists or links to lists of plants that are native to your area. I know you're experiencing a drought now, but I'm sure this isn't the first time in history that SC has experienced a drought, so many plants that are native to your area have the ability to survive with the amount of rainfall you're getting now, otherwise they would have died out a long time ago. If you're still getting over 30 inches of rain per year as you were in the years you listed above, that's still going to be more water than is ideal for some western native xeriscape plants, and if you ever go back to years with more normal rainfall they'll be very unhappy (for perspective, where I am we average about 15 inches of rain per year, and there are many places in the west that are even drier than that). Versus many SC/southeastern natives can tolerate your normal amt of rainfall as well as the reduced amt you've been experiencing lately.

Thanks for the references, ecrane.