My photography focuses on Pacific Northwest native plants. Native plants are plants that grew in the Pacific Northwest and the Americas before people from the Old World and elsewhere arrived.
What is so special about them? Though many species of native plants are not as showy or obviously useful as some cultivated plants, I feel that they are one of the things that distinguish this place from any other place in the world. The wide variety of habitats found here creates communities or assemblages of plants distinctive to the Pacific Northwest.
We cannot rely on cultivation alone to preserve certain of our native plants. These plant communities or assemblages are difficult if not impossible to recreate in cultivated settings as some of the species that will thrive in a natural setting do not do well under cultivation.
I feel native plants are important because every plant species is unique. Many plant species create unique chemical compounds and many have special survival strategies. We cannot know what useful things might be derived from these plants sometime in the future. An example of just such a native plant is the Pacific yew. The Pacific yew was a shrubby, nondescript little tree that no one paid much attention to until it was discovered that chemical compounds in its bark were effective at fighting certain types of cancer.
Native plants are less likely to become noxious weeds, although this is a general rule and there are exceptions as I am sure any farmer or gardener would point out. Native plants also often provide the best food and shelter for native wildlife.
I don’t advocate the abolishment of cultivated plants. That would be unrealistic and hypocritical on my part; I’m merely trying to increase appreciation of our native plants.
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