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The Meaning of "Native"

Lee Dittmann
Critical to an understanding of the importance of native plants is knowing just
what we mean by that word “native.”  It is a word with variable meanings, and
how it is used in describing plants does not match how we use it in reference to
human beings.  This confusion can erode support for control of non-native
species, for to some it is a distinction equated with “immigrant-bashing.”

First, the basic meaning when used with humans:

To be native is to have been born in the area in question; but native also
designates those whose ancestors were from the area, particularly if the culture
has become especially adapted to local conditions over many centuries.

Immediately, we have two levels of meaning, and we’re only talking about
humankind.  I am a native American, but not a Native American.  Human mobility
adds other problems.  I was born in Washington, for example, but grew up in
California.  How can I be a native of Washington when I hardly know the place—
yet I’m not a native Californian, either!

To clearly communicate, we must understand the underlying reason for using the
label.  In human beings, “native” may imply respect for a culture which has been
shaped by sustainable interaction with a particular ecosystem.  Or, if we are
bigots, we may use it with derision for “ignorant savages” who know little of the
outside world and modern technology.  Often we imply territorial rights.  Native
people were here first, therefore they have rights not automatically due to
newcomers.

Note how in that territorial sense, we tend to emphasize the meaning of the word
which justifies our politics.  This becomes particularly strange when here in the
Southwest Americans of Northern European descent complain about all of the
trouble caused by “illegal immigrants” from Mexico—when their own ancestors
weren’t invited to this region by the descendents of Spanish explorers who
settled in New Mexico four centuries ago.  Nor were the Spanish invited by the
Navajo or Apache, nor the Navajo and Apache by the Hopi before them.  If we
live in an area and want to stay there, we tend to feel just as native as someone
whose ancestors pre-dated us by many centuries.

But territorial rights are all political concerns, questions of relations among the
members of our own species.  I suspect most scientists understand that this
association of the word native is too subjective.  To be useful when speaking of
native plants and animals, it must have meaning in the context of the sciences,
particularly ecology and evolutionary biology.

This is why a native plant species is best defined as one which has
inhabited a particular region for thousands of years.

It takes thousands of years for the species of an area to co-evolve, to adapt to

each other and to the peculiarities of their physical environment.  This is why a
plant species which has survived in the area for a few decades or even a couple
of centuries isn’t considered to be native.

An Arizona Native Plant Society field trip participant seemed puzzled—if not a bit
put off—when I mentioned that mullein (Verbascum thapsus) was an alien
species.  She had heard that the Navajo used it.  If a Native American uses a
plant, is it not then a native plant?  No, because we are mixing two different
senses of the word.  Any intelligent land-based culture, like that of the traditional
Navajo, will make use of any plant new to the area if it can be used.  Likewise,
I’ve observed native Lesser Goldfinches eating seeds of the alien and rapidly
spreading star thistles—but that does not make the star thistle native.

So be careful about associating political issues on human immigration with

ecological issues on controlling alien plants.  Believing the US should open its
borders to more immigrants but at the same time being dead set against
importing alien plants is not inconsistency.  If, on the other hand, you feel that our
government should expel all undocumented immigrant people and stop any
others from entering, it does not follow that you should also take a “native plants
only” stance.  These are completely different issues.

The reason they are different is the dominance of culture in humans.  In short, a
human being can change behavior to minimize impact on the new home.  A plant
cannot (not without thousands of years of evolution).

Can an immigrant plant ever become native—in the biological sense?  Yes, after
thousands of years.  No one can give a precise time, for the moment a plant
enters new territory, the forces of evolution begin: any time the new environment
(including, remember, animals and other plants) favors one genetic trait of the
newcomer over another, natural selection begins.  I would expect that after even
just a few hundred years, some species (particularly insects and other
invertebrates with short life-cycles) would adapt to the presence of a newcomer,
for a food-source (i.e. any other organism) will not go forever unused.

To get an idea of the relative speed of evolution, consider creosote bush (Larrea
tridentata).  This species found it’s way to the southwestern deserts just around
10,000 years ago, apparently from South America where a close relative exists
today.  It is the dominant shrub now in this “new” home.  There are now
numerous species of insects and spiders associated exclusively with it (and not
found in South America)—all evidently having evolved in that time frame.  I don’t
think anyone would disagree that creosote bush is now a native species.

But since any species reproducing in a region is eventually going to become

native after (I repeat) several thousands of years, should we bother trying to
control or eliminate alien plants?  Yes, if we care about preserving native
species, whether plant or animal.  And yes, if we care about our own survival.

The key concepts are these:

1) Change is always present, to a greater or lesser extent.  Never mind the

actions of humanity, continents move, earthquakes occur with the shifting of
continents, volcanoes erupt, mountains are raised and eroded to the ocean,
climates change, plants and animals naturally migrate to wherever they can
survive.

2) Rapid change causes extinctions.  Most multi-cellular species cannot evolve

fast enough to cope with rapid changes.

3) The more change, the more difficult it is for organisms to adapt and
survive; i.e. the number of changes matter, in addition to the rate of change.

4) The introduction of an organism into a particular region is itself a

change.  Neither animals nor plants are inert.  Their very presence will have an
effect on the biotic community.  Ways plants may affect the environment include
competition for resources (space, water, nutrients, light); competition for
pollinators; change in the chemical composition of the soil from root secretions or
the decay of leaves; attraction of animals (including invertebrates) to the area
which might not otherwise live there.

5) The more rapidly new species inhabit a region, the more unstable is the
composition of the flora and fauna of that region—not merely because a new
species, by definition, changes the flora or fauna, but because the new species
itself can cause changes in the abundance of existing species for the reasons
suggested in 4) above.

6) Our survival is directly impacted if among the species which become more
abundant as a result of widespread environmental change are very many which
crowd out our food plants (“weeds”) or eat them outright (“pests”).  Changes in
plant cover can also change the local and even global climates, and this may
have far-reaching economic effects in our lives, such as less predictable and
more adverse precipitation and temperatures.  And to the extent that these
changes, in concert with the pressures of human overpopulation and increasing
demand on resources, cause economic hardships, we increase the number of
people who feel they have nothing to lose by violence, by the adoption of
fanatical and intolerant world views.  Preserving stable native ecosystems is, in
other words, one key part of preserving the relatively stable economic and
political systems we depend upon.

It therefore is prudent for our own survival on this planet that we attempt to
minimize changes in the native ecosystems which, by definition, have evolved
a high degree of stability.  Things will change, whether we will or no.  But we can
limit the rapidity of change.

We have already made enormous alterations to much of the country, and the
world.  We need to cut our losses by, a) halting or slowing the spread of alien
species, b) revegetating impacted areas with locally native plants, and c)
adopting an attitude and philosophy of enjoying what each local native
ecosystem has to offer rather than trying to “improve” it by bringing in plants from
other parts of the world.

So the meaning of native in ecology is identified with stability.  A native

ecosystem is a tried and true community.

Can we reconcile the variable application of the term native as used with human
beings to that used with plants?  Yes, if we invent the concept of “functional
nativity.”  A plant is native if it has co-evolved with its associates for thousands of
years.  We hominids can be functionally native if we behave as if we had co-
evolved with the plants and animals of the region wherein we choose to dwell.
This means using our intelligence, coupled with science, and in consultation with
the traditions of native cultures, to practice a sustainable way of life—one quite
different from our present “buy your way to happiness” short-sighted culture.

With such a practice, it matters not in the human realm whether our ancestors
were here for millenia or are just two days off the plane from Finland or South
Africa.  To be functionally native is to be in tune with the patterns and needs of
the amazing native biotic community—wherever we live.

This article first appeared in the Late Winter 2002 issue of Townsendia, the
newsletter of the Northern Chapter of Arizona Native Plant Society.  It has been
slightly modified here.  This page last revised 16 April 2009.