Know Where Your Plants Come From

Native Florida Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Native Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
Where your plants originate is important. Just because a species is native to your state does not mean that it is the same plant throughout its range. In order to adapt to a wide range of growing conditions, plants form distinct ecotypes throughout their range and these are very different plants even though they may look the same. Growing conditions in New England or the Midwest pose very different needs within the local plant population and evolution has shaped each to perform and thrive over time in those specific conditions. It is not reasonable to expect that these plants can somehow make the transition to Florida, for example, where I now garden.
Two of the most common cases in point are those I've photographed above - now living in my central Florida landscape. These often confound the gardeners I share this state with. The reason sometimes lies in simply putting them in the wrong growing conditions, but it often results from the fact that folks are using material that originated from other regions of the country. When this is the case, these plants normally live for a year and die by winter. It's not the plant's fault. Fault lies solely with the gardener who mistakenly believes that they are using "native" plants.
Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) ranges throughout much of North America. In the fertile Midwest, it is a resident of rich prairie soils and experiences freezing winter temperatures for months during the winter. In Georgia, it thrives in the sticky red-clay soils common to that region. In Florida, it is found in pure sand with exceedingly sharp drainage. Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is much the same. In Florida, it is vouchered only from Gadsden County in the central Panhandle near the Georgia border. Here, it occurs in calcareous glades that are quite rare in my state.
In our zeal to add these plants to our landscape, we often fail to recognize that our success lies in knowing the provenance (where the plants originate from) of our plants. It is the key to our eventual success. It is often difficult to find either of these species in the native plant trade here, but relatively easy to find out-of-state seed sources. The problem is that these seeds are not seed from Florida native plants and they won't thrive. There is a dirty trick sometimes played by plant nurseries here that labels plants like these as "Florida natives" when they are grown from seed of plants being propagated in their Florida nursery. This makes them no more "native" than the seed they started with.
Over the years, I have received a great many messages from folks frustrated trying to grow these and others such as yellow coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) and Stokes aster (Stokesia laevis). The source of their frustration invariably lies in the source of their plants/seed.  I have all of these thriving in my current landscape and they have acted like the perennials they are. They originate from Florida seed stock. I live well south of the natural range of purple and yellow coneflower and that of Stokes aster, but my plants have evolved under Florida conditions. If used in the right microclimate, I've found that they will do well. In my distant past, I tried all of them from out-of-state seed sources and I've never had them live a year no matter where I've planted them.
Provenance is extremely important for most plants, especially for plants that have evolved distinct ecotypes for adaptations to distinct and very different growing conditions. Do not let your zeal for a plant, override your sensibilities. Know where your plants originate from, even when they come from native plant nurseries. If the source is not Florida (or whatever state you are gardening in), be wary of purchasing them. Then, if you truly feel the need to purchase them anyway, realize that you are embarking on an experiment that many others have probably also embarked on previously and failed. Perhaps you'll succeed, but in the long run it is always best to temper your zeal and search out a source for local material.

Purple coneflowers in my landscape - July 6 2019

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