jpl-plants


Introduction
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The charter of the Friends of Brightwood Park (FOBP) says
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Our mission is to restore, preserve, and protect Brightwood Park as a Nature Preserve, to educate our community about the history of the park and the flora and fauna that inhabit it, and to encourage passive activities in the park that respect nature and the sanctuary that a nature preserve offers.
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I was asked to expand upon the first section. What do the Friends do to restore, preserve, and protect Brightwood Park as a Nature Preserve? Fortunately for me (and for you), Dr. Douglas W. Tallamy has, in April 2025, released a new book, How Can I Help?, Saving Nature with YOUR YARD'', ISBN-13: 9781643264714. This is a collection of answers to questions posed by readers of his earlier books. This makes it perfect for cutting and pasting Dr. Tallamy's succinct responses.

A couple administrative notes:
  • This article is not intended as a substitute for reading Dr. Tallamy's Book(s). Indeed, we hope that what we quote will be an incentive to buy and read the originals. This article is about what we do in Brightwood Park, but ``How Can I Help'' is about what you can do in your own yard. Dr. Tallamy's website, https://homegrownnationalpark.org, has a wealth of resources for expanding your mind and your yard.
  • We unrepentantly anthropomorphize. It would be scientifically correct to say If eating a plant offers some advantage to a herbivore, then, unless something about the plant discourages being devoured entirely, that plant will not pass its genes onto another generation. But my eyes glaze over just typing that sentence. No plant wants to be somebody's lunch.​ This hopefully gets across the same idea, even though plants don't want something. Anthropomorphizing runs the risk of thinking that the way that people do things is somehow superior to the way that plants and animals operate. Aug 29, 2023 | ISBN 9780593133255 An Immense World, Ed Yong describes sensory capabilities that animals possess far beyond how humans are equipped. Modesty is in order, but anthropomorphizing can be helpful when communicating informally with other humans.

Plants

What's the big deal about plants? The epigraph to Zoe Schlanger's book "The Light Eaters", has a delightful answer to that.

    They can eat light, isn't that enough?

    Timothy Plowman, ethnobotanist

Life on Earth requires energy to function, and that energy is generated by harvesting it from something else in the food chain. Carnivores consume other animals. Those other animals may consume smaller animals or some plants, or both. Herbivores rely entirely on plants. You don't have to look very far down the food chain before you find plants supplying all the energy for the animals that consume them. And where do plants get their energy? Light. Ultimately, all life on earth is solar powered, and plants are the storage devices for that energy. So plants really are a big deal.

Native and Invasive Plants

You can only categorize a plant as a native or an invasive in the context of an ecosystem.
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