Adrian

Part 6: How to Plant and Care for Native Plants

This is the final video of the curriculum, and it explains how you can use the knowledge learned from the previous videos to protect native plants or even grow your own native plants, either in pots or in garden beds.

Wow! This is our final section! You’ve learned so much already; this section is just here to help you put that knowledge to good use. How can you grow these native plants you’ve learned about so that you can help our ecosystem get stronger? Well, every plant needs different things; different amounts of space, light, and water, different types of dirt, different everything! Some plants can be grown indoors, some can’t, and in this section, we’re going to go over exactly what our 5 different native plants need so that you can get gardening! 
Okay, so, sunflowers: remember these are so important because they’re so resilient and strong? That also means they’re big. These plants are generally too big to grow in a pot, as they need a lot of space for their roots, and they grow very tall so they need room for that as well. As you may have guessed from the name, they need lots and lots of sun! If you want a smaller sunflower, you can get a dwarf sunflower plant, which is okay to grow in a pot.
Wild violets are much smaller so it’s okay for them to be in a pot. Whenever you put your natives in pots, it’s best if those pots can be placed outside, so that your plants will help bolster the ecosystem!

Violets like shade, and they like wet, moist dirt, so make sure you plant them somewhere damp and shady!

Now, the native honeysuckle is simply too big to be grown inside. It’s too big for a pot, too, and there’s no dwarf version! If you want to plant this plant, you need to make sure you have a very large area for it, and something nearby that it can climb up. 
Goldenrod is also generally very big, but remember there are different types of goldenrod; if you have a smaller outdoor garden, dwarf goldenrod would be the right size for you. None of them are quite small enough to be happy in a pot, though. 

There are also many different kinds of asters! For small spaces, stokes aster is good. Stokes aster like to be right in the middle: not too much shade or sun, not too much water or too little water. My favorite is heath aster, which is a low growing plant, and would like nice in a very large pot. They like the sun, but they also like to be in the middle when it comes to water! Another type is wood aster, which is very big, so make sure if you want to plant that kind you have enough space!

Remember, never take a native plant out of nature! That would do more harm to the ecosystem than good. When you’re ready to start you’re native plant garden, go to a native plant nursery, or find somewhere that’s having a native plant sale! Some of my favorite p;aces to buy native plants are:

Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
Stoneleigh Gardens
Bartram’s Garden

Thank you for going through this course!

You now have the knowledge to protect our ecosystem and our native plants; it’s time for you to go out and start doing it!

Go out and get gardening!

Part 5: How Native Plants Help the Ecosystem 

This video continues the conversation about the five native plants identified in the previous video. It explains why those plants are important and what they do as a helpful part of our native ecosystem. 

Alright! In the last section, we went identified 5 different native plants! This section is going to describe why those native plants are important. We know why invasive plants are harmful to native plants; but why are these native plants so great, anyway? Well, read this section and watch the accompanying video to find out!

We’ll start off with asters and goldenrod. These two plants actually work together to support their ecosystem! What does that it mean? Well, asters and goldenrod grow near each other, and they both bloom at the same time, so each plant can attract pollinators to the other plants! They both bloom in the fall, which is super important because while there aren’t a lot of fall-blooming flowers, there are a lot of insects that need to eat in the fall! One of those insects is the monarch butterfly, which needs lots of flowers so it can get enough for its long migratory journey!

Next, we’ll cover sunflowers. Sunflowers are an important plant because they have a strong stem that’s hard to break. Often, after a storm, many flowers will be damaged and unable to provide food for insects and animals in the ecosystem; not sunflowers! They’re tall and sturdy. Sunflower seeds are also extremely nutritious and a valuable food resource for wildlife.

Now, wild violets: a small, low growing spring flower. These plants are also important to butterflies, but the butterflies that they feed are called fritillaries, not monarchs. Some of them use the leaves of this plant to lay their legs. There is also a type of bee that only drinks the nectar from wild violet flowers, making this a vital plant! They are an early-blooming flower, which, similarly to the goldenrod and asters, means they provide nectar at a crucial point in the season when few other plants are blooming. 

Lastly, we’ll look at our native honeysuckle plant. These plants bloom for a very long time, and provide nectar to birds and insects for many weeks! They grow into big bushes that birds and small mammals can make their homes inside of. Hummingbirds enjoy the trumpet-shaped flowers of a native honeysuckle plant.

So you see, these plants are very valuable! Without them, our insects, birds, and even mammals would be harmed! Not to mention other plants! Our next section will be the last, and we’ll learn how we grow and cultivate these native plants in our home gardens or parks!

Until then, why don’t you go into nature and see if you can spot any of the bugs, plants, or animals described in this section!

How many were there?

Did you see more natives or invasives?

You can also download this coloring sheet of plants, bugs, and wildlife. 

Part 4: Five Native Plants and How to Identify Them

This video discusses native plants in our ecosystem, and how we can identify them. The native plants identified are sunflowers, wild violets, native honeysuckle, asters, and goldenrod.

Now we’re moving on to talk about native plants! Similar to invasive plants, we’ll have two sections on this subject. In this section, we’re going to talk about a select few native plants, and how we can identify them! The plants discussed here are sunflowers, wild violets, native honeysuckle, asters, and goldenrod!

So, let’s get started! Sunflowers. How can we identify a sunflower? Make sure you watch the video for this, as pictures are extremely helpful in learning to identify things! The sunflower is a tall flower with a thick, hairy stem, and rough leaves. The flower of a sunflower has yellow petals surrounding a dark brown seedhead in the middle. Sunflowers are pretty obvious; once you learn what they look like, you’ll be seeing them everywhere!

Next on our list are wild violets. These are low-growing plants with small, heart-shaped leaves. In the spring, when they’re in bloom, they have very small light purple flowers.

Next, native honeysuckle. You’ll remember we discussed invasive honeysuckle in the section about invasive plants, and it’s important to learn to tell the difference between these two plants. The first way to tell the difference is by looking at the leaves: the leaves on the invasive plant are long and pointy, and the leaves on the native plant are shorter and rounder. Then, you can look at the flower: the native honeysuckle has a long trumpet-shaped flower with small petals at the end, and the invasive honeysuckle has long petals on either side and a stem in the middle. Finally, if you break off a branch of a honeysuckle plant, invasive honeysuckle will have a hollow stem on the inside, and native honeysuckle will have a solid one!

Now, asters. Asters are a fall-blooming plant with lots of little flowers. There are many different types of asters, and the plants can look really different- but they all have a similarly shaped flower! Watch the video for a visual of what that flower looks like. 
Finally, goldenrod. Goldenrod is a tall plant with many yellow, or gold, flowers that grow along the stem. It grows commonly on roadsides and in meadows, and it also blooms in the fall. 

Alright! In our next section, we’ll continue this discussion, and talk about how these native plants are beneficial to the ecosystem. In the meantime, try identifying native plants! Go into your local park, woods, or backyard, and see if you can find any of the native plants discussed in this video! How many were there? More, or less than the invasive plants? 

Part 3: How Invasive Plants Harm Ecosystems

This video continues the conversation on the three invasive plants identified in the previous video, which are garlic mustard, invasive honeysuckle, and stilt grass. This video explains how these plants originally came to our ecosystem and the harm that they do to it. 

We’re going to learn more about the three invasive plants we identified in the previous section: garlic mustard, invasive honeysuckle, and stilt grass. We know how to identify these and how to remove them, but, why would we even want to remove them? What is so bad about these three plants? This section will answer those questions!

So, garlic mustard. Why is it invasive, and not naturalized? There are three big problems with garlic mustard: 1) all of those white flowers create thousands of seeds, which blow around in the wind, and make thousand more garlic mustard plants! 2) garlic mustard doesn’t taste very good to animals, like deer and rabbits, so they avoid eating it, and eat native plants instead! 3) garlic mustard creates a toxin and it releases it into the soil, which hurts other native plants in the area. All of these three things allow garlic mustard to kill native plants, and take over the space they once had, which unbalances the ecosystem!

Well, what about invasive honeysuckle? Here are three reasons: 1) the flowers on invasive honeysuckle plants also produce many seeds, which are eaten by birds and spread throughout the forest. 2) invasive honeysuckle grows very quickly in forests, and will create a canopy of honeysuckle leaves, which shades out native plants so that they can’t grow in the forest! 3) invasive honeysuckle grows up trees, and can even hurt the trees it grows up by wrapping around too tightly and choking them! These are all big problems in our forests, and they are all ways in which invasive honeysuckle kills native plants and takes over their space.

And our last plant, stilt grass. What are some reasons stilt grass is harmful? Well, 1) every piece of stilt grass can make 100-1,00 seeds, which can sit in the soil for three years before they even start growing! 2) stilt grass has a rooting stem, and if this stem even touches the ground, it will grow a new stilt grass plant. 3) just like garlic mustard, animals don’t like to eat stilt grass, and will eat the native plants around it instead! All of these allow stilt grass to create a blanket over the forest floor, similar to the canopy that invasive honeysuckle creates, and take over all of that space from native plants. 

Wow! So these plants really are invasive! Make sure to watch the video for images of the plants in action and further information.

Try going into your backyard, local parks, or woods again, and see if you can see any of these plants in action!

Can you find a place where stilt grass has created a blanket, or honeysuckle is choking a tree?

Part 2: Identifying and Removing Invasive Plants

This video dives deeper into the topic of invasive plants, by discussing three invasive plants in this area. The plants discussed are garlic mustard, invasive honeysuckle, and stilt grass. The video covers how to identify those plants and how the plants can be removed. 

Now that we’ve learned all about plants and ecosystems, let’s look a little more closely at invasive plants! In order to do that, there are three invasive plants we’re going to be focusing on: garlic mustard, invasive honeysuckle, and stilt grass. The video included in this section provides photographs and video images of these plants, so make sure and watch that for a better idea of what they look like!

For starters, we’ll look at garlic mustard. Garlic mustard can be found in forests, fields, and backyards; it’s a very prolific plant. Garlic mustard is a tall, leafy green, which blooms with small white flowers in the spring and summer. Garlic mustard is also edible! For the removal of this invasive plant, you must pull it out and remove the entire root If you don’t, it’ll just grow back!

Then we have invasive honeysuckle. This can be a trickier plant to identify, as there is also a native honeysuckle plant that grows in this area. We’ll discuss native honeysuckle more in a later section. Invasive honeysuckle is a vining bush, and it has trumpet-shaped flowers which are usually yellow or white. Removing this plant can be hard, as the trunk can grow to be very thick, and the roots to be very large. Tools like a large shovel or a saw may be required for the removal, depending on the size of the bush. 

Our last plant is stilt grass. Unlike the invasive honeysuckle, stilt grass is a very small plant. It is a short grass that covers the ground, often in forests, but it can also be found in meadows and backyards. It’s easy to pull out, especially when it’s young in early spring, and can be removed without using any shovels. The problem is that the plant can cover large areas of land, so removing it may be a time-consuming activity. 

That’s all on these invasive plants! Watch the next video for more information about what these plants do that is so harmful. A good idea, now that you know how to identify these plants, is to go into your local park, woods, or backyard and see if you can find any of them! 

Part 1: What are Native Plants?

This video defines different types of plants and the negative and positive effects that they have on the ecosystem they exist in. It also provides a definition for the term ecosystem. The different types of plants are defined are: native, non-native, invasive, and naturalized.

It’s time to learn about native and invasive plants! What are native and invasive plants, and how do they affect our local ecosystem? In fact, what’s an ecosystem? Through this series of videos and written content, you’ll find the answer to all of those questions. For this section, the focus will be on definitions. 

To start, let’s define an ecosystem: an ecosystem is a community of plants and animals and their environment. An ecosystem can be as small as the community of bugs living under a log, or as large as an entire ocean. Everything within an ecosystem plays an important role in how that ecosystem functions. Ecosystems in different parts of the world have different plants and animals.

Next, we’ll define native plants: a native plant is a plant that has always lived on this particular piece of land, in this particular ecosystem. As this land evolved, this type of plant evolved with it. A native plant has a very important role in its ecosystem because it has been a part of it for so long, and it became very connected with all of the other parts. 

What about other kinds of plants? Well, there are non-native plants: a non-native plant is the opposite of a native plant. A non-native plant is a plant that moved from the ecosystem where it was native, to a different ecosystem in a different part of the world, where it is not native. 
There are two kinds of non-native plants: naturalized plants and invasive plants. Naturalized plants are plants that have learned to become a part of the ecosystem they moved to, and do not harm their new ecosystem. An invasive plant is a non-native plant that, instead of learning to become a part of its new ecosystem, becomes more powerful than the native plants and hurts the ecosystem it moved into. 

Watch the video for further explanation of these definitions!