By Robert Carter reporting for Native Plant News Spring 2025
In early spring, I get a hankering. The days are getting longer and the birds are getting excited. It is time for a plant freak like me to grab the hand lens and head out on a flower hunt. I am like a kid on Christmas morning when the flowers get showy and the birds get singy (I just made a new word). Early spring is a great time to see early bloomers like trilliums, green-and-gold, and trout lily. Few things will cheer you up as quickly as spring wildflowers accompanied by an American Robin serenade. Don’t delay, they are called spring ephemerals for a reason. The early bloomers are exploiting the warm days with no canopy to block the sun to bloom and make seeds. Once the leaves expand on the trees and the forest floor gets darker, they are done for the season.
Early spring is also a great time to break out the old rusty shovel and get some more native plants in your yard. This leads to dilemmas. Although it is tempting to dig up plants from the wild, it is best to purchase plants or get them from a fellow native plant enthusiast. Using native plants in your landscape increases opportunities for pollinators and caterpillars. More caterpillars mean more nesting birds in your yard. I remember laying in my bed at night listening to the mockingbird all night. I was amazed by the operatic repertoire. My neighbor just wanted the bird to shut up, but back to plants. A trip to the nursery to find native plants can be another dilemma. Many of the plants in plant nurseries are cultivars. Cultivars are plants that have been bred, back-crossed, and cloned to provide people with what they think they want instead of what nature provides. The cultivars may produce different colored flowers and leaves or flowers with double the number of petals, but this often means that the native pollinators will not be happy nor receive what they need.
Wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) blooms from spring to summer. It is deer and rabbit resistant. Photo by Lisa Lofland Gould
Pollinators and caterpillars are attracted to plants by colors. Many caterpillars avoid the cultivars with different colored leaves. The more variegated, the less likely native larvae will feed on the plant. Double-petaled flowers are visually appealing but difficult for pollinators to pollinate– there is just too much petal tissue to rummage through to find pollen or nectar. Some of the cultivars produce none or reduced levels of pollen and nectar. Other cultivars are disease resistant, but disease can be reduced by matching plants to the proper soil and site and avoiding species monocultures. Plants that have been manipulated by breeding often have lower genetic diversity, making them even more vulnerable to disease and environmental stressors. Sometimes a row of plants at the nursery may be genetically identical because they have been cloned.
You may be able to find native plants at the nursery, but proceed with caution. You may avoid a cultivar but get a nativar. A nativar also has gone through some human-induced selection to produce the desired characteristics. The best choice for a native plant enthusiast is a true native plant grown from a seed from an open-pollinated plant in your area. Then the genetics of the plant are adapted to your local climatic and soil conditions. I always ask about genus and specific epithet to make sure I am getting a native plant. Just using the common name is not sufficient. I have seen a “native plant garden” with beautyberry (Callicarpa sp.) from another country. Always ask by genus and specific epithet, but that is not the whole story. You need to make sure there is not something like ‘Carter’ following the scientific name. The name in single apostrophes indicates that the true native plant has gone through human-driven selection and manipulation. Whew, finding a true native plant is a lot of work, or you could just visit a native plant nursery for your area. Check Native Plant Nurseries – North Carolina Native Plant Society (ncwildflower.org) for a list of native plant nurseries. Or attend the NCNPS Annual Meeting & Plant Sale, or a plant sale offered by an NCNPS chapter.
It also is important to have some knowledge of the soil on your property. A plant in the inappropriate soil will not be a happy plant. It is a good idea to send a soil sample to the extension service so you can make informed planting decisions. Forcing a plant to live in acidic soil when it prefers basic soil is like trying to force me to stay inside in the spring. It just will not work. I need to answer the hankering, so I’m headed out now to find some Hexastylis. The only reliable way to identify them to species is with flowers. I need to be there when they bloom. Happy Hankering.
Robert Carter grew up exploring the Piedmont of South Carolina. He attended Clemson University (BS, MS) and Auburn University (PhD) to obtain degrees in forestry. His graduate research involved identifying landscape ecosystems using plants, soils, and landform in the mountains of North Carolina and the Longleaf Pine ecosystems of lower Alabama. After a career in academia, he moved back to South Carolina where he is a Forestry and Wildlife Agent for Clemson University Extension and Outdoor Education Specialist with the Catawba Indian Nation.