Saint or sinner sowing wild seeds?

[Steven Lyle Noffsinger]

Jack,

Another really good question/thought is, how many "native" species are 
really not native?  I'll bet the average bionet.plants person doesn't know.

Steve Noffsinger

> Another possible -- though perhaps not popular -- view is this:
> plants spread naturally through a variety of techniques, including birds,
> wind, water, Velcro-like stickers, and even the mud in a mammal's paw or
> bird's claw. Homo sapiens is part of nature -- an odd part, no doubt -- and
> its spreading of seeds, while more sophisticated sometimes, is just another
> way plants get to move around. 
> 
> Sometimes this creates problems because the moved plants find their new homes
> nicer than their old ones, and they may tend to take over and push out
> "natives." However, in the great scheme of things, this is how the world has
> worked for eons. Countless species of plants and animals have come and gone,
> long before H. sapiens was messing around with them. The fittest were the
> survivors. 
> 
> We humans have speeded up the changing plant landscape considerably -- in many 
> ways, horribly. But whenever I see a field of ox-eye daisies in June, I can't
> help but feel that we don't always screw it up. 
> 
> I have mixed feelings about this outlook. I wonder what others think of it. 
> 
> --Jack Sanders, Ridgefield, Conn., jfsanders at delphi.com
>    [author of "Hedgemaids and Fairy Candles: The Lives &  Lore
>    of North American Wildflowers," Ragged Mountain/McGraw-Hill, 1993]
> 
>