I should note here that Dame's Rocket is one of the one's that tricked me too when I was just starting out. Nurseries and seed companies sometimes list it as a wildflower, but it is an introduced species that is on the noxious weed list in some states. As I mentioned, Most spurge sold in nurseries is Japanese. A native is P. procumbens, but I have never seen it in a nursery. Most honeysuckle sold in stores and nurseries is also alien and highly invasive. http://plants.usda.gov/cgi_bin/topics.cgi?earl=plant_profile.cgi&symbol=HEMA3 breaks honeysuckle found in the wild into species and lists foreign or native, noxious weed, endangered, etc. I myself still cannot really make heads or tails of it all as there are so very many. After my experiences with pachysandra and dame's rocket I would be very hesitant to buy honeysuckle intending it as a native without a great deal of research into both species and nurseries. Yellow Flag Iris is another that I was surprised to find out is introduced. I have it growing alongside my native Iris versicolor - harlequin blueflag. I like mine and have no intention of pulling it out. It hasnt moved much in 40 years but it has alot of competition. It is a big problem in some states though, or so they say. The USDA does not list anything with Yellow flag as a common name. I am guessing ours is Iris pseudacorus - paleyellow iris, as it is the only yellow one shown in NY state. All of the native Irises are blue. The most common is I. versicolor -harlequin blueflag. I. verna - dwarf violet iris is also native to NY. I. virginica looks much like the versicolor and is endangered in NY & Penn. I. prismatica - slender blue iris wraps up the list and is threatened in NYS. see: http://plants.usda.gov/cgi_bin/topics.cgi?earl=plant_profile.cgi&symbol=IRIS (scroll down for the maps by species - click on each for info and pictures for that species) Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus, or yellow Daylily is also introduced, as is the orange H. fulva. (see: http://plants.usda.gov/cgi_bin/topics.cgi?earl=plant_profile.cgi&symbol=HEMER ) Besides sheer brattiness, I am trying to illustrate a couple points here. The most obvious is that one cannot trust nurseries for information. Their goal is to make money. Besides that, most people working in nurseries have very little knowledge. They are not hired for expertise, they are hired because they will work for low pay. (present company working in nurseries excluded, of course.) Expertise costs more. If your goal is to buy native plants then it is imperative to research beforehand. The USDA site quoted here is a great place to start. One thing I would love to work toward is a system of lableing for commercial grown plants. Optimally I would like to see it mandatory, but until then I would love to havethe backing to put pressure on commercial sellers and growers for voluntary labling. There will always be people like I was in the beginning, planting in woodlands and wetlands without information. People do not research usually until they get really into gardening. It is the newbies that make the boo boo's and they can only be protected by responsible marketing practices. The other point is the difference between a wildflower and a native. Wildflower is a more loosely defined and subjective word and many include naturalized foreign species. Native is a more specific and objective term and usually means that it was growing in an area before European settlement. A species may be native to the US but not native to a region. (such as Rudbeckia laciniata var. humilis - green headed coneflower, which is native to five states in the SE but not NY ). Some may have varieties native to a region but not other varieties of the same species (Rudbeckia laciniata var. bipinnata, Rudbeckia laciniata var. laciniata: both going by the common name "cut-leaf cone flower" are native to NYS). Others, such as most Monarda, tiarella, huechera, are cultivars of a native species. Again, you may or may not care, depending on purpose, but it is great to make informed decisions. In summary, beware of vague terminology. Look for reputable sellers that give precise information if you are intending to reintroduce species or are trying to create a nature friendly garden of environment. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these plants. The questions are the where and why's. I have an ornamental garden and a woodland/wetland garden and what I plant in each goes by different rules. Anyhow that got way off on a tangent, as this is supposed to help us know WHERE we can find natives, if that is what we are looking for. Sorry-its a virgo thing *blush*. Anyhow, goodnight. PAX Laurette Here is a link that might be useful: USDA profile for Dame's Rocket

Thank you so much for all your suggestions and support! I buried Bagel yesterday. After lots of research, I finally just stopped by a native plants nursery near the forest. Bleeding Heart and Columbine beat out Foamflower for looks, all had lovely foliage. But I ended up settling on Hay-scented Fern. It's much more tactile, and somehow seemed much more Bagel the Ferrety - the others seemed too ornamental/fragile or something for his (or my, really) personality. He has an honorary fern now. Think it should be renamed Bagel Fern. And yes, I did discover upon enquiry at the nursery that really no plant that will survive the winter in the wild can do well in a pot. And that almost no plant will be ready for taking a cutting in less than a couple years after planting. And that few plants take well from seeds. So... I bought two ferns, planted one, and will see if I can keep the other around on balconies, etc., and get a third for my mom's yard where we'll have another memorial. If I can come back in a few years and take a cutting from the wild fern, I'll do that. So anyway, thank you all again. The strange and unexpected things about all this are that 1) I can see having an interest in gardening now; this from a very non-planty person, and 2) it helped me get more over a bit of a plant phobia caused by a really bad poison ivy run-in last summer. Thanks. - Karen

I'm not judging them all. Just the morons who brought over the invasives lol. :) But I still think that they should be more concerned for their natives, but same can be said for the people here too. I am of European decent. We have only been out of the last dark age for like 50 years. About the time we realized we were killing ourselves with all the pollution and eviromental repercussions. Their are native plant lovers in all those countries who are fighting their own battles. So it's pretty much the same everywhere. We have a member who lives in Sumatra and grows plants. It upsets her to see all the jungles plowed and drained for oil palms, but what can 1 person do by themselves. It comes down to teaching the children for the next generation!

Half my milkweeds are popping, and there's not much happening to the pots that were on the right side of the T5. I'm worried that the light was too close to those pots and they cooked. I took the baggies for humidity off of those pots. It looked and some amplexicaulis seeds were still good, and the pot tipped over and a bunch of soil spilled out. LOL Another mishap. I just packed everything back in and sprinkled sand over the top for good luck.🙏🙏🙏 There's at least 1 fungus gnat flying around. Maybe if I run the metal halide light when the T5 is off, any fungus gnats will fly unto it and get fried. Is there a dunk or something I could use when watering that would kill them naturally? So I'm worried and I just put more seeds into moist coffee filters for 30 more days CMS. This is backup in case the other ones never pop up. I give people who sell plants or run nurseries a lot of credit, because it's a lot of time consuming work, taking care of plants. I'll check out those grasses you mentioned. I wanted to do about 50 percent of the front lawn in shorter grasses and sedges, and I want different textures intermingling, so these curly grasses can help do that. The garden half will be all crazy, imagine having Prairie Dock with its ginormous leaves in the front yard.