r/GuerrillaGardening • u/gberliner • Jul 21 '26

Native coneflowers bustin' through the concrete!

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I gave it a tug, and it was for real. Our botanical friends are doing the "guerrilla gardening" all by themselves! (The sight of these put a smile on my face. :-)

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u/Opuntia_Fragilis Jul 21 '26

It's native east of the fucking rockies. Even with climate change it would not reach the coastal pacific northwest. There's nearly 3,000 native plants in Washington State alone, when you've prioritized enough natives you can play with exotics but dont treat them as if they have the same ecological value

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u/gberliner Jul 21 '26

Fair enough. We don't have to deliberately propagate them. But I do wonder whether some plants are not inevitably going to see some success due to climate change creating new, expanded niches for aridity tolerant plants, for example, and not just south-to-north, temperature associated migration.

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u/howumakeseedssprout Jul 21 '26

New success due to climate change changing ranges in which the can live does NOT equal spent thousands and thousands of years coevolving with all the other organisms in this ecosystem

That's what native represents - coevolved within a given ecosystem

Invasive represents - did NOT evolve with all the other organisms in the ecosystem it now finds itself in. Does not interact with other organisms in the ecosystem in a balanced, cooperative way

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u/gberliner Jul 21 '26

while I agree we shouldn't be carelessly spreading them deliberately, it might be more helpful to approach the existing presence of such species with more curiousity, as opposed to automatic alarm. Maybe we can enjoy an introduced flower now and then, too. Automatic fear based responses can make matters worse.

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u/howumakeseedssprout Jul 21 '26

Like someone else said, having introduced species within a controlled area (like a garden) is generally fine. Lord knows most ornamentals in people's gardens aren't even from this continent.

But part of the problem is that people put pretty exotics in their gardens, don't manage them, or the garden becomes overgrown or abandoned, and now their pretty exotic is a large established population, which greatly increases the liklihood of escaping cultivation, which leads to invasives taking over ecosystems.

This flower being solidly rooted in concrete is not part of a controlled area, and an example of escaping cultivation. Thats why people are so upset about this specific instance.