Hello iNat friends! I could use some help in annotation of some local observations.
My county of residence in Arkansas does not have, according to the state plant atlas, any naturally-occurring Taxodium distichum, as it was eliminated during the unchecked timber harvest of the last century.
As a Park Ranger for the US Army Corps of Engineers for 25 years, I’ve witnessed T. distichum spread naturally along the shoreline of DeGray Lake, situated within the same county.
Here’s my question: I know for a fact that baldcypress was planted in the parks and other portions of the shoreline by park staff over the years. All of the voluntary baldcypress is from anthropogenic assistance, and certainly has no local genetics. Do we leave them as wild?
T. distichum certainly COULD still occur natively within the county, and I have been actively searching for it along our river bottoms for years. I’m hopeful to discover it one day.
Here are the observations I’m looking at (one of them is at my home on a 100 year old pond levee; I honestly don’t know where it came from):
Thank you for any help! We have other native trees that have escaped our park planting efforts. I imagine this scenario occurs frequently across the planet.
IMO, they are wild. The parent or grandparent plants were reintroduced and then reproduced on their own without any human intervention. Similarly, wild turkeys have been reintroduced to areas where the species had been eliminated by hunting - they are considered wild and not introduced in those places.
Offspring of cultivated trees are wild; however, if you know a plant is either cultivated or the descendant of cultivated plants, you can mark it as not autochthonous. I couldn’t find any existing field that serves this purpose, if there is one please let me know.
Once more people start using this field, I believe it will provide very valuable research information.
100% agree, hence my concern. I just wanted to encourage thought and discussion on the topic. In a place where all individuals of species are presumed eliminated in a region, users are going to continue observing these “escaped natives”. They aren’t part of a story of successful restoration or recovery; these individuals are part of a very unnatural ecosystem… an upland shoreline. These were rough mountains and hills only 75 years ago. One day, it may be mountains and hills again. It could be helpful for someone down the road to know how baldcypress established on the side of a hill in the Ouachita mountains lol.
Yes, they’re definitely wild, although recent immigrants.
I wish you luck in finding some last descendants of the original Alabama Taxodium distichum. If there are any out there, they could contain some different genetics.
The bummer is that any remaining wild individuals more than likely have extensively hybridized with escapees from cultivation by now, distinctive native genes are going to be extremely difficult to identify
Thanks for posting this - I’ll try to use “autochthonous” in the future!
We have just returned from Christmas Island - an Australian territory, closer to Java than Australia. The early Malay workers planted many fruit trees in the forest (to help staying alive!). This was in the 1800’s. Now, when you come across one of these “cultivated” trees in the forest, you need to make the decision - an original planted one or a self-sustaining offspring. With relatively short-lived species like paw-paw that decision is fairly easy, but what about a huge breadfruit tree. Is it 100 years old or 180 years old? Does it matter? It is now part of the habitat providing shelter and food for the native animals.
The line is blurred for species that only survive because people provided habitat for them, but spread beyond their original planting. Does a 2nd or 3rd generation plant that survives in a park because of regular water count as wild, if nothing else besides irrigation for the planted trees helps it survive?
No, I would say this would probably not be wild, the same as volunteers of a planted species in a garden, as they have not left the “the intended gardening area”.
This is my concern. These trees are growing on a shoreline right now. It was hills and mountains only 75 years ago. In 75 years, it could again be hills and mountains. These records hold more than simple observations and definitions of wild vs cultivated. Were capturing human history, and we’re also creating it.
In other words, 75 years ago, there was no Taxodium at this spot in the county because there was no shoreline habitat then? What you initially said was that Taxodium had been eliminated by unchecked logging. The implication is that that there used be native Taxodium there.
What about, for example, annual plants grown as part of a habitat rehabilitation program? There are a number of places near me here in Iowa where they planted native prairie plants and while they likely did not grow directly from seed scattered by people, they are still growing in the same general area those seeds were scattered.
If the area isn’t under direct human management that is necessary for the individuals to survive, the offspring should probably be wild. If they require constant intervention in terms of cultivation (like irrigation) from humans to survive, the offspring should probably be cultivated if they are in the same area. If they spread outside that area on their own, even if it is to other irrigated areas, they’d probably be wild.
I see where that would be confusing. Baldcypress occurred on the other side of the county. The Ouachita mountains, where the dam is located, drain into the gulf coastal plains within the same county. The mountains weren’t suitable for this species prior to 1973.
It’s an upland lake of the Ouachita Mountains. If the shoreline disappears, they’ll like survive for a long time without human assistance, they just won’t continue to establish.
I have seen the same in my country. Baldcypresses have been planted outside man-made habitats in woodlands or on the shores of lakes and have somehow spread vegetatively. The issue whether such plants should be considered wild in a strict sense is debatable. It is undoubtedly true that someone has planted them there on purpose and this species only shows a very limited capacity of spreading and only through vegetative growth.
Other species that here share with baldcypresses such way of spreading like Yucca gloriosa and Agave americana (they cannot set fruits and disperse seeds here) have a much higher capacity of invading the land nearby wjhere they have been placed. So, it much depends on the capscity of this species in your area to produce an offspring.
In the end, I would warmly suggest to adopt a “practical” approach to distinguish what is wild from what only persisted since they have been planted: the capacity to spread. If a planted plant just succeeds to produce few new shoots through vegetative growth or just some “knees”, the usefulness of considering such plants really wild may be questionable.
I definitely used the wrong title for this post. Most of the comments have been related to iNat’s definition of wild vs cultivated, and that’s on me. You do understand my concern. I’m not sure if these trees are actually spreading by seed, but they seem to be. Either way, they aren’t native here. Reservoir shorelines around the world provide temporary habitat for species in upland areas that would otherwise never survive. The shoreline won’t be there forever. I don’t want the success of this species in Clark County, now or later, to be scored by a temporary manmade impoundment.