Not only have I never seen Buddleia reseeding around waste places/roadsides in this area, I can't even get it to survive in my garden, so I don't see invasiveness as an issue locally. I am highly dubious about the proposition that non-native plants supply no nourishment to native insect/animal species. Clearly chickadees and lots of other birds/animals have adapted to using these plants. There was an article in the Sunday New York Times last week from a garden writer emphasizing this (and recommending that people plant a wide variety of native and non-native plants to nourish the local wildlife)*. *this writer's recommendations probably should be taken with a grain of salt, seeing as how his article was primarily about gardening with climate change (he seems to think that a single colder than normal winter is good evidence of climate change, which actually is documented not by single seasonal variation but changes occurring over many years). Here is a link that might be useful: gardening for climate change This post was edited by eric_oh on Sat, May 10, 14 at 11:14

I was happy to see this in my newspaper this morning, but only one of the three photos had the name of the rose in the caption. I wish they had labeled all the photos with the name of the rose. Thanks for posting, Henry. Sherry

That's what John Starnes told us. And he's the person who knew those roses best. It doesn't surprise me. I've seen it happen in other places. They don't want the roses in the way of "maintenance." They don't want the roses to obscure the tombstones. And the roses CAN -- there is some legitimacy to that concern. (SEE BELOW) But if you respect the history, and the people, and the families who buried them, you should, I think, respect their choice, to put roses there. Jeri

It would be nice if there were a demand for locally native roses but I haven't seen it either. Good to see someone writing about them though, and realizing that different parts of the country have different species. But, the primary wild rose here in the PNW is not R. woodsii - that's an East of the Cascades species. The Nootka rose is the most common native rose in the maritime PNW, not just in Alaska. It grows all the way down into northern California. I don't know that birds distinguish much between species of wild roses. They seem to like any rose that grows into a big arching tangled thicket. This year I've been learning to appreciate wild rose sepals. The sepals on Nootka rose are something else - longer than the petals, as well as longer lasting! and elegantly shaped with a constriction in the middle. Kind of spoon-shaped although more like an old-fashioned iced tea spoon, long and narrow.