More than five years ago I’ve planted some crocuses in my yard. Every year since, one flower blooms.
My question is: if a plant lives for more than two years without any help, does it count as cultivated anymore?
1 Like
if you originally planted that individual, then yes, it’s cultivated in perpetuity
7 Likes
There are many spring flowers growing here in my garden space, planted by the original owner over 30 years ago. I don’t do anything with or for them, but yea, they are cultivated, they only show in observations as host for the visiting arthropods.
1 Like
If they seed and spread do the new plants count as cultivated too?
Is it escaping from the original planting area, or is it only naturalizing within the garden or planting area? Clearly there is a point at which garden plants become fully naturalized, but for me, it’s not the length of time, it’s the ability to propagate beyond the original boundaries in space that determines whether to call it wild or not. I live in an edge environment in a rural neighborhood where there’s a lot of wild, native forest, a lot of pastures, gardens, orchards, etc., and lots of edge habitats between such areas. There are many examples here of garden plants spreading out from their original planting area and into the edge habitats, and a few examples of plants that have spread into the actual native forest. Tracking this sort of thing is very interesting and important to many people, so it’s worth trying to mark such plants correctly as to whether they were actually deliberately planted there, naturalized in one spot over the years, or are spreading beyond their original location and starting to influence other plant communities and become naturalized or even invasive.
1 Like