About our Native Plants designation

When we label a plant "Native" at Plantness, we want you to know exactly what that means and how we decided. Here is our framework, our sources, and where the lines get fuzzy.

What counts as Native at Plantness

For our catalog, a plant gets the Native tag if its parent species is native to Georgia or the broader Southeast United States. We use the regional definition (Southeast) rather than the strictly state-level definition (Georgia only) because plant communities do not stop at state lines, and many plants that originated in neighboring Southeast states grow just as happily in Marietta yards.

Native vs. Nativar vs. Hybrid

This is where it gets nuanced. Three different things can be sold under the same general "native" umbrella, and they are not all created equal.

True native species

A plant grown from seed or propagation of the wild species, with no human breeding involved. Example: Thelypteris kunthii, the Southern Shield Fern in our catalog, is the wild species exactly as it grows in Georgia woodlands. Morella cerifera, Wax Myrtle, is the same. These are the purest form of native.

Nativars (cultivated varieties of native species)

A nativar is a selected variety of a native species. Some person, somewhere, found a plant in the wild (or among seedlings) with desirable traits (compact size, better flower color, longer bloom time) and propagated that one plant to keep those traits stable. The species is still native; the variety is human-selected.

Examples in our catalog: 'Goldsturm' Black-Eyed Susan (selected from native Rudbeckia fulgida), 'Magnus' Coneflower (selected from native Echinacea purpurea), 'Heavy Metal' Switch Grass (selected from native Panicum virgatum), 'Little Gem' Magnolia (dwarf cultivar of native Magnolia grandiflora).

Native plant purists distinguish nativars from true natives. Pollinator research is mixed: some nativars support local pollinators as well as wild types, others (especially those bred for unusual flower colors) do not. We label nativars as Native at Plantness because the underlying species is native, but we want you to know the distinction.

Hybrids with native parentage

A hybrid is a cross between two different species. When both parents are native to the Southeast, the hybrid is generally accepted as native. When only one parent is native, opinions vary.

Example in our catalog: Mt. Airy Fothergilla (Fothergilla x intermedia) is a hybrid of two Southeast natives, F. gardenii and F. major. Both parents are native, so we call the hybrid native too.

We do not stretch this to plants where only a distant ancestor was native (the Knockout Rose, for example, has Rosa carolina in its lineage but is mostly bred from European stock; we do not call it native).

Our sources

We cross-reference these authorities when deciding what gets the Native tag:

• USDA PLANTS Database (plants.usda.gov) for native range maps by species.
• Georgia Native Plant Society for Georgia-specific guidance and recommended plant lists.
• UGA Cooperative Extension publications on native landscaping for Georgia.

We also cross-reference the Georgia Exotic Pest Plant Council invasive plant list (gaeppc.org) so that nothing we sell is on Georgia's invasive-species watch list, regardless of whether it is technically native somewhere else.

When in doubt, ask us

If you are planning a specifically-native garden or working on a pollinator project where the difference between true native and nativar matters, email us at hello@plantness.co. We will tell you exactly what we know about a specific plant, point you at the original source for verification, and recommend alternatives if the one you are looking at does not fit your project.

Native plant labeling has real-world consequences for pollinators, water use, soil health, and the local ecosystem. We take it seriously. The classifications above are our best honest read, not authoritative botanical pronouncements. Reasonable native-plant experts may disagree on individual cases. We err on the side of disclosure.