Native plants are good. Invasive plants are bad. Right? Beyond the Binary questions that pervasive assumption across eleven accordion-fold booklets, following one plant or idea at a time through ecology, history, and language.
This project does not make a blanket case either for or against native or invasive species. It makes a case for nuance, and for looking at the specific contexts of individual plants when making decisions on how we manage the land.
CHAPTERS (these will be linked to pdfs once they are final)
I – Native v. Invasive
II – Ecosystem Services
III – Eastern Red Cedar
IV – Phragmites
V – Succession & Novel Ecosystems
VI – Alternative Frameworks
VII – A Hive of People
VIII – The Wilderness Myth
IX – Loaded Language
X – Landscapes On the Move
XI – Recalibration
PRINTING AND FOLDING
Here’s what works best for our printer.
– Landscape orientation
– Double sided printing, flip on short side
– Actual size (print to actual size, rather than fitting to printable area)
Feel free to fiddle with your own printer’s settings.
SOURCES
Mark A. Davis et al., “Don’t Judge Species on Their Origins,” Nature 474 (2011): 153–154.
William M. Denevan, “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (1992): 369–385.
Brendon M. H. Larson, “The War of the Roses: Demilitarizing Invasion Biology,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3, no. 9 (2005): 495–500.
Ariel E. Lugo & Eileen Helmer, “Emerging Forests on Abandoned Land: Puerto Rico’s New Forests,” Forest Ecology and Management 190 (2004): 145–161.
Ariel E. Lugo, “The Outcome of Alien Tree Invasions in Puerto Rico,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2, no. 5 (2004): 265–273.
Emma Marris, Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021). Source of the John Muir passage, via M. Kat Anderson, from Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra (1911).
Laura J. Martin & Bernd Blossey, “The Runaway Weed: Costs and Failures of Phragmites australis Management in the USA,” Estuaries and Coasts 36 (2013): 626–632.
Nicholas J. Reo & Laura A. Ogden, “Anishnaabe Aki: An Indigenous Perspective on the Global Threat of Invasive Species,” Sustainability Science 13 (2018): 1443–1452.
Banu Subramaniam, “Barbarians at the Gate,” Pioneer Works Broadcast, June 2023.
Judith S. Weis et al., “Real Science for Real People: New Jersey’s Tidal Marshes Are in Peril,” Hackensack Tidelines, Fall/Winter 2021.
FURTHER READING
Peter Del Tredici, “The Flora of the Future,” Places Journal, April 2014.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, ch. 18 (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013).
Emma Marris, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011).