Native, alien, or invasive?

A common misconception about our built landscapes and forests is that all green is good when in fact, globalization has led to the proliferation of many plant species that are not native to our region. These plants can sometimes harm biodiversity, leading to unhealthy ecosystems. Native plants on the other hand, provide important services to our local ecosystem.

Important definitions:

Native: a plant known to be historically indigenous to a region.

Alien or “non-native”: a plant species that is not indigenous to our region, but may not be invasive. In fact, only a small fraction of alien plants are invasive.

Invasive: An alien plant species capable of rapidly spreading, and once spread, can cause harm to its ecosystem.

Teatown often gets questions about why we do not control all the invasive plants on our preserve. The answer is that a very high proportion of the plants we have in our forest understories, shrub habitat, meadows, swamps and roadsides are invasive! To control all invasive plants on a 1,000 acre preserve would require vast amounts of resources (time and funding). In addition, white-tailed deer feed mostly on the native plants, which gives the invasives even more of a growing advantage than they already had.