Native Plant Communities

Biology 101 The Communities of Ecology

An Ecological Community is defined as an assembly of 2 or more species occupying a shared area. This assembled community survives due to the effects of evolutionary development. The community is characterized by these relationships, which often are codependent and help to sustain the community. These biological communities can be large, such as earth's atmosphere, or microbial.

See Biocoenosis

Closed Gentian (Bottle Gentian) (Gentiana andrewsii) Allegany State Park August 26, 2017

Pollinator conservation is a gateway to ecological restoration. Understanding the contexts of ecological communities through the language, lessons, and strategies of pollinator conservation open up conservation discussions and opportunities.

Recognizing the communities of ecology help us to understand how evolution has shaped our planets biology and health. Through these lenses we can find and follow roadmaps to create critical conservation.

Coevolution
It is important to support native plants that have evolved in a place. Our region, -parts of Western New York, Southern Ontario, and the Niagara River Greenway are located in the Carolinian Zone. Certain plants, pollinators, and plant communities have evolved here together. This means that plants from outside of this region may not be as productive as plants that have evolved here. Certain pollinators have a dependency on a narrow range of host plants. Others are more generalists. Many butterflies need specific species of hosts. For instance the Monarch Butterfly depends upon Milkweed. Not all milkweed, for instance, is created equally. The PCA advocates for only 3 species of milkweed to service breeding Monarchs in this region. Furthermore we advocate that those species be locally source for the purposes of genetic resiliency.

What is a Native Plant Community
by Michelle Van Strom

Ecology versus Horticulture

“Plants, like people, organize themselves into communities, [an ecosystem]. It is the soil, moisture, climate, chance and often the process of disturbance [wind, water, fire] that determine the composition of a natural [plant] community. Each species seeks the conditions necessary for its survival and is contained throughout its lifecycle by environmental factors. When we refer to the vegetation of an area we refer to these communities.

Each organism we depend on is surrounded by other organisms that sustain it and these in turn are woven into an increasingly complex natural system. Time after time, creatures thought useless or harmful are found to play crucial roles in natural systems.
A community is defined by its dominant species—the ones that occupy the most space.
An identifiable regional landscape with a sense of place is created when native plants [and plant communities] are used in a landscape design. The strongest argument for the use of native plants is provided by the need to preserve biodiversity. The genes in the individual plants of the region and the populations composed of these individuals are unique.
The trees of our woodlands are essential to all the associated vegetation and wildlife that depend on them.

Important Terminology For our purposes we will define restoration as the process of re-establishing natural communities by planting and encouraging the native species originally present in an area. It goes beyond planting to stabilize eroding areas. It goes beyond just landscaping with native plants. It is an attempt to recreate nature by assembling a documented community from its component species. This sets it apart from reforestation, naturalizing, and landscaping for wildlife.
-Reforestation focuses on the trees, not the forest community.
-Naturalization (or natural landscaping) bridges the gap between landscaping and restoration. Being a modification of traditional landscaping (horticulture) aesthetics are still a concern; the difference lies in the choice of plants and their maintenance. Native plant species [not nativars] are used, although the plants themselves may not be indigenous. Generally, an effort is made to reduce applications of fertilizer and pesticide and operations like mowing, trimming and watering. Some thought is usually given to creating a wildlife habitat by, for example, grouping plants into beds, thickets, groves or leaving meadows unmowed during the breeding season. Naturalized plants are those that, like Queen Anne’s lace, have colonized beyond their natural range, with the purposeful or accidental aid of humans. They have gone wild and displaced native species.
-Landscaping for wildlife generally targets a single animal species or group of species and then attempts to provide some or all of the conditions necessary for their survival. Aesthetics (horticulture) are not ignored. Although such a landscape will ordinarily include many native species, it often includes exotics [nativars and cultivars] as well, an no attempt is made to create a natural community.
If no trees are used in a conservation planting, the process is sometimes referred to as revegetation.
Reclamation is used if the planting site is a worked-out gravel pit, quarry, or industrial land.
Ecological Restoration. The first efforts at restoration were directed towards prairie communities and later wetlands. Only in the 1980’s was the concept expanded to include woodlands.
The intent of restoration is to reconstruct a portion of the ecosystem. [Ecology]. In its strictest form, restoration means returning the landscape to its original state. While planting native species in a composition similar to the original community is primarily, restoration also attempts to re-establish the ecosystem functions of nutrient cycling, energy flow, water cycling and succession. Successful restoration leads to an improvement or expansion of habitat for native species, and often to an increase in an area’s biodiversity. The other more subtle changes create a healthier ecosystem for all organisms, including us.

One big difference between restoration and other types of planting is the acceptance of change—the restoration planting is expected to welcome and thrive on change.
Succession. When vegetation is destroyed, succession is the process that puts it back. In a sense, succession is the ecosystem healing itself.
Even if we could save every remnant (we can’t) we would not have enough intact ecosystem to preserve regional biodiversity. We will have to create more. Ecological restoration is the means to do that. We should take whatever ground we can find and restore it, but especially we should try to restore areas that will (1) enlarge existing natural habitat, (2) link habitat “islands,” and (3) buffer wetlands, streams and open drains.

A restored landscape can reflect both the natural and cultural character of a region—the inherent qualities that distinguish it one place from another.”
Source: Trees of the Carolinian Forest, A Guide to Species, Their Ecology and Uses; Gerry Waldron pgs 37-57

Carolinian Zone (see map)
Forests
These amazingly diverse deciduous forests are unique in Canada. Named for North and South Carolina, where similar forest are more common, only a small portion of this forest region reaches into Canada. It boasts more flora and fauna species than any other ecosystem in Canada, including
   70 species of trees
   65 species of ferns
   400 species of birds
Carolinian Forest Species:
Trees: Tulip Trees, Sassafras, Shagbark Hickory, Paw-Paw, Black Cherry, Blue Ash, Kentucky Coffee
Shrubs and small trees: Flowering dogwood, spicebush
Birds: Hooded Warbler, Acadian Flycatcher
Mammals: Southern Flying Squirrel, Opossum

Reference Source: Trees of the Carolinian Forest, A Guide to Species, Their Ecology and Uses; Gerry Waldron pgs 37-57