When I went through the “species” section in My Observations, I saw so many species that are marked invasive. Why is this? https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?subview=map&user_id=tlee6552&view=species (Note: Probably won’t show N or IN unless you log in)
IN stands for “introduced”, not “invasive”.
Species may be N (native) or E (endemic) or IN (introduced). (There may be other labels with which I am unfamiliar.)
Oh. Thank you for answering
But another question: what about the ones who don’t have N or In and just blank?
They just haven’t been done yet.
Each species has to to be verified for each place and manually set for each place, I believe, all by volunteers with the know-how to know where to look and how to effect the changes.
Your observations are in urban areas, which tend to have a lot of introduced species as these species tend to thrive in disturbed environments. You can add establishment means to checklists if you like.
Thank you for clarifying
Not sure how it is where you are, but come to NZ, and there is about 10 introduced plant species for every native. Though “only hundreds” of them are on the weeds accord.
"DOC Science Advisor Dr Kate McAlpine says New Zealand has an extraordinary number of exotic plant species – more than 25,000.
“The number of introduced plant species in New Zealand is 10 times greater than the number of native species.”
The new list comprises 386 environmental weeds, an 18% rise from the 328 weeds on the previous (2008) list." https://www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-releases/2024-media-releases/rapid-growth-for-weeds-list/
Realistically we have a lot more on the invasive side, but there is a limit to how much you can battle, with how much funding you have.
That sounds daunting. And some must be garden escapees from South Africa. Haunted by our watsonias over there !
But some of the natives are really cool. Your native Chionochloa spp (endemic mostly to NZ, a couple in Australia) are something I want to see when I go there.
Definitely gotta watch those South African bulbs. So beautiful though.
I live in Michigan
Why are imported ornamentals even still a thing? It seems like stopping plant/seed imports, outside of controlled environments that serve some scientific or conservation purpose, would be the single biggest aid in the fight against invasives we could ever achieve. Like, step one in stopping them would be to stop importing them in the first place.
Except. Food crops. Plantations for timber. South Africa is covered in invasive wattles from Australia – but they were brought here for dune stabilisation. Pine, eucalyptus and oak (fail !) for timber.
And illegal imports of poached plants and beetles and reptiles ? People dump their unwanted aquarium exotics or ‘pets’.
Gardeners?
Yeah, it’s more complicated than I made it out to be. I think farmed crops would be the biggest exception. Corn, potatoes, beans, probably most food and cash crops are actually introduced, and certainly not natural. I don’t think that is as much of a problem though as just the way in which they are typically grown. That’s a whole different topic though.
@Vireya Native plants can make beautiful gardens, won’t harm the environment (again, more complicated than that), and won’t have nearly the carbon footprint from international shipping.
Honestly, I think the answer to my question is something like “because businesses and governments make too much money from this to want to change”.
So do I. Fortunately we don’t have it nearly as bad as New Zealand!
In urban areas you will find a lot of introduced plants, but fortunately only a few of them are actually invasive.
In more rural areas, and especially in high quality habitat, you will find far more native species than introduced in Michigan. However of the few introduced plants that do show up in large numbers in high quality habitat. . . Those are the invasive ones!
For example on my own property, there’s a few plants of chicory and daisies and wild carrot mixed in with the otherwise native flowers out by the road, which I don’t worry about. The rest is almost all native stuff (hundreds of species and counting) except highly invasive multiflora rose, burning bush, garlic mustard, and squills I have to do yearly battle with.
You don’t need to tell me that a place’s native plants can be used in gardens. However, try telling every gardener that they cannot grow lovely plants they have seen somewhere on TV or the internet or wherever. People crave variety and newness, and there are huge world-wide horticulture businesses set up to cater to their wants, breeding and supplying a constant flow of new potential future weeds.
It’s profitable. Not to mention implementation of controls seems to be lax, and varies from state to state in the USA.
I’ve seen exotic ornamental grasses that have been labeled as noxious weeds being openly sold even in big box stores.
Many from South Africa (Though dont know how many are restricted to South Africa specifically) Crocosmia is everywhere on many parts of our roadside. (We call it montbretia). Part of the season its those, another part of the season its Hesperantha coccinea.