Native Plants of the Midwest, by regional plant expert Alan Branhagan, features the best native plants in the heartland and offers clear and concise guidance on how to use them in the garden. Plant profiles for more than 500 species of trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, ground covers, bulbs, and annuals contain the common and botanical names, growing information, tips on using the plant in a landscape, and advice on related plants. You'll learn how to select the right plant and how to design with native plants. Helpful lists of plants for specific purposes are shared throughout. This comprehensive book is for native plant enthusiasts and home gardeners in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, northern Arkansas, and eastern Kansas.
Native Plants of the Midwest features the best native plants in the heartland and offers clear and concise guidance on how to use them in the garden. Alan Branhagen is director of operations at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and the former director of horticulture at Powell Gardens, Kansas City's botanical garden. He is the author of Native Plants of the Midwest and The Gardener's Butterfly Book and has written articles for a range of publications, including Fine Gardening, Missouri Gardener, and Missouri Prairie Journal. Alan is a naturalist and plantsman with a background in garden design and management; he specializes in botany, butterflies, and birds. Introduction
This is a book about the plants indigenous or native to the heartland of North America. No place else on earth has such an extreme continental climate, yet it is a place filled with plants of every size and in every hue. This book aims to inspire readers to plant native plants while learning how and where to grow them successfully. There is no perfect plant so understanding the strengths and limitations of each species is a critical component. I also aim to explain why it is important to utilize native plants in a landscape wherever possible.
Humans have manipulated the landscapes of the Midwest since arriving in the region. The first English-speaking settlers described a forest that stretched from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. The prairies were celebrated as a sea of grass, so vast it stretched to the horizon in many places. Much of the forest was portrayed as open woodland, with a parklike appearance of scrub and gnarly trees interspersed with grass. We like to think of these early descriptions as depicting a pristine place, but we know that the bison, elk, and other creatures along with Native Americans and their use of fire created that landscape.
When settlers arrived, the region was already changing as the great glacial ice had melted not that long ago (in the big scheme of things). Northern forest trees were retreating northward and southern species advancing as the climate changed. Grasslands had periodically advanced eastward and northward through periods of heat and drought, the habitat they required maintained by natural and man-made fires that burned through entire landscapes. Plants filled every niche, segregated by their adaptations to all the various conditions from wet to dry, muck to sand, sun to shade, and hot to cool microclimates.
Today the Midwest is one of the most human-manipulated landscapes: the seas of prairies are now a vast expanse of farmland while the forest has been fragmented into smaller tracts. Once open woodlands and savannas are now dense forests. The region's great herbivores, bison and elk, no longer roam, while wildfires no longer burn. Some native animals like white-tailed deer and some imported plants like bush honeysuckles and reed canary grass have gone awry, usurping indigenous plants in remnant wildlands. With the forces that shaped the original landscape now gone, the remaining natural areas must be managed almost like gardens to protect their inhabitants.
The indigenous plants
