Founded | 1985 |
---|---|
Founder | James A French |
Type | Charity |
Registration no. | 130720824RR0001 [1] |
Focus | Ecological Restoration |
Location | |
Area served | North America |
Key people | President: Vacant Executive Director: Peter Kelly Honorary Patron: Sir David AttenboroughCBE,FRS Honorary Directors: Robert Bateman, The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson PC, CC, CMM, CD, Farley Mowat, Freeman Patterson, Carol Rykert, Dr. Adrian Forsythe, Glen Loates [2] |
Volunteers | 400 |
Website | nanps |
Formerly called | Canadian Wildflower Society |
Horticultural Member of Toronto Botanical Garden [3] |
The North American Native Plant Society (NANPS) is a volunteer-operated, registered charitable organization concerned with conserving native plants in wild areas and restoring indigenous flora to developed areas. [4] It is noted for its work in educating business and the public about the benefits of using native plants, [5] [6] and its work in promoting native species through plant sales [7] and seed exchanges has been credited with the resurgence of some species. [8] It also maintains a list of local native plant societies across the United States and Canada. [9]
NANPS is dedicated to the study, conservation, cultivation and restoration of North America's native flora. NANPS's key purpose is to provide information and to inspire an appreciation of native plants with an aim to restoring healthy ecosystems across the continent. To that end, NANPS currently:
The logo was designed in 1994 by Beth McEachen. It is a woodcut portraying three native plants representing three transcontinental, native families, viz: Araceae, Orchidaceae, Iridaceae. The examples shown are an arum, a cypripedium and a blue-eyed grass.
NANPS was founded in 1985 by a small group of conservationists as the Canadian Wildflower Society. [11] The name was later changed to the North American Native Plant Society to reflect a wider range of activities and broader membership. In 1985, the Society began publishing their well-received native plant magazine, Wildflower, under the editorship of James L. Hodgins. [12]
In 1985 it also established a gardening Code of Ethics for its members. In 1986, it sponsored its first public annual native plant sale and filed a letters patent. [13] In 1988, it sponsored its first native plant propagation workshop, and established wildflower gardens tour in Guelph and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
By 1993, it purchased a 50-acre Carolinian woodlot known as Shining Tree Woods near Cultus, Ontario, to conserve the nationally rare native cucumber tree, Magnolia acuminata . [14] In 1994, the Canadian Wildflowe Society co-published (with the Federation of Ontario Naturalists) the first booklet on the native plants of Carolinian Canada with conservation and horticultural advice.
The Canadian Wildflower Society changed its name to the North American Native Plant Society (NANPS) in 1998. [15] In 2003, it purchased a five-hectare (13-acre) parcel of Zinkan Island Cove, a provincially designated ANSI (Area of Natural and Scientific Interest) on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario. In 2000 the North American Native Plant Society decided to stop supporting the publication of Wildflower magazine, [16] and replaced it with "The Blazing Star'. Wildflower was published independently, but eventually ceased publication in 2004. In 2005, NANPS began conducting regular seminars around Ontario, and formed partnerships with Toronto Botanical Garden and the City of Markham [17] Also, a NANPS member founded an e-newsletter, The Local Scoop.
In 2010, NANPS celebrated its 25th anniversary by publishing a special edition of The Blazing Star. NANPS founder and Honorary President, James A French, published Silver Memories, a personal recollection of the first 25 years. [18]
In 2013 the Society campaigned for a native plant garden as part of the renewal of Ontario Place. [19]
The Thousand Islands – Frontenac Arch region or the Frontenac Axis is an exposed strip of Precambrian rock in Canada and the United States that links the Canadian Shield from Algonquin Park with the Adirondack Mountain region in New York, an extension of the Laurentian mountains of Québec. The Algonquin to Adirondacks region, which includes the Frontenac Axis or Arch, is a critical linkage for biodiversity and resilience, and one with important conservation potential. The axis separates the St. Lawrence Lowlands and the Great Lakes Lowlands. It has many distinctive plant and animal species. It is one of four ecoregions of the Mixedwood Plains.
The Rouge River is a river in Markham, Pickering, Richmond Hill and Toronto in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada. The river flows from the Oak Ridges Moraine to Lake Ontario at the eastern border of Toronto, and is the location of Rouge Park, the only national park in Canada within a municipality. At its southern end, the Rouge River is the boundary between Toronto and southwestern Pickering in the Regional Municipality of Durham.
A wildflower is a flower that grows in the wild, meaning it was not intentionally seeded or planted. The term implies that the plant is neither a hybrid nor a selected cultivar that is any different from the native plant, even if it is growing where it would not naturally be found. The term can refer to the whole plant, even when not in bloom, and not just the flower.
The Carolinian forest refers to a life zone in eastern North America characterized primarily by the predominance of deciduous (broad-leaf) forest. The term "Carolinian", which is most commonly used in Canada, refers to the deciduous forests which span across much of the eastern United States from the North Carolina northward into southern Ontario, Canada. These deciduous forests in the United States and southern Ontario share many similar characteristics and species hence their association. Today the term is often used to refer to the Canadian portion of the deciduous forest region while the portion in the United States is often referred to as the "Eastern deciduous forest".
Cootes Paradise is a property with many boundaries, but is primarily a property of the Royal Botanical Gardens at the western end of Lake Ontario, but is also remnant of the larger 3700 acre Dundas Marsh Crown Game Preserve established by the province of Ontario in 1927., dominated by a 4.5 km long rivermouth wetland, representing the lake's western terminus. It is found on the west side of Hamilton Harbour and is located in the municipality of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Cootes Paradise Environmentally Sensitive Area is larger "core area" within the City of Hamilton's Natural Heritage System and has a very similar boundary to the original Dundas Crown Game Preserve.
Rouge National Urban Park is a national urban park in Ontario, Canada. The park is centred around the Rouge River and its tributaries in the Greater Toronto Area. The southern portion of the park is situated around the mouth of the river in Toronto, and extends northwards into Markham, Pickering, Uxbridge, and Whitchurch-Stouffville.
Liatris aspera is a perennial wildflower in the Asteraceae family that is found in central to eastern North America in habitats that range from mesic to dry prairie and dry savanna.
Liatris pycnostachya, the prairie blazing star, cattail gayfeather or cattail blazing star, is a perennial plant in the Asteraceae family that is native to the tallgrass prairies of the central United States.
In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution during history. The term is equivalent to the concept of indigenous or autochthonous species. A wild organism is known as an introduced species within the regions where it was anthropogenically introduced. If an introduced species causes substantial ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage, it may be regarded more specifically as an invasive species.
Liatris spicata, the dense blazing star, prairie feather, gayfeather or button snakewort, is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to eastern North America where it grows in moist prairies and sedge meadows.
Erigeron philadelphicus, the Philadelphia fleabane, is a species of flowering plant in the composite family (Asteraceae). Other common names include common fleabane, daisy fleabane, frost-root, marsh fleabane, poor robin's plantain, skervish, and, in the British Isles, robin's-plantain, but all of these names are shared with other species of fleabanes (Erigeron). It is native to North America and has been introduced to Eurasia.
Liatris cylindracea is a plant species in the family Asteraceae. It is native to eastern North America, where its populations are concentrated in the Midwestern United States. It is found in habitats such as prairies, limestone and sandstone outcroppings, bluffs, barrens, glades, woodlands and dunes.
The Wildflower Society of Western Australia (Inc.) (WSWA) is a member of the Australian Native Plants Society (Australia). In each of the other states of Australia, there is a region of the ANPS(A) and they share many of the aims of the WSWA.
The Mixedwood Plains Ecozone is the Canadian ecozone with the most southern extent, covering all of southwestern Ontario, and parts of central and northeastern Ontario and southern Quebec along the Saint Lawrence River. It was originally dominated by temperate deciduous forest growing mostly on limestone covered by glacial till. It is the smallest ecozone in Canada, but it includes the country's most productive industrial and commercial region, and is home to nearly half of Canada's population, including its two largest cities, Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. Hence, little of the original forest cover remains, making protection of the remaining forests a high conservation priority. This ecozone includes two regions described by J.S. Rowe in his classic Forest Regions of Canada: the entire Deciduous Forest Region, and the southern portions of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest Region. In the province of Ontario, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources maps this area as Site Regions 6E and 7E.
The Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG) is located at 777 Lawrence Avenue East at Leslie Street, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Termed "The little garden with big ideas", the TBG is nearly four acres and features 17 themed "city-sized gardens". Located in the north-east corner of Edwards Gardens, the TBG is a non-profit horticultural and educational organization with a mission to connect people, plants and the natural world through education, inspiration and leadership.
Liatris ligulistylis is a flowering plant of the family Asteraceae, native to the central United States and central Canada.
The Alaska Native Plant Society (AKNPS) is a non-profit organization focused on studying and conserving Alaska's native plant species. The organization was started in 1982 by Verna Pratt and a group of amateur botanists with the goal to study, conserve, and educate. Their mission is to conserve and study Alaskan native plants in their natural habitats, and to educate in order to increase understanding and appreciation of native plants.
The Escarpment Biosphere Conservancy (EBC) is an environmental NGO, a registered environmental charity, and a qualified recipient to receive ecological gifts through the eco-gifts program of Environment and Climate Change Canada (Canada). It is the largest Ontario-focused land trust, with over 190 nature reserves as of January 2021.
Rattray Marsh Conservation Area, is 94 acres of environmentally sensitive wetland situated along the shore of Lake Ontario in Canada. It is found on the west side of Jack Darling Memorial Park and is located in the city of Mississauga within the Regional Municipality of Peel. It is the last remaining lakefront marsh on the western end of Lake Ontario and is owned and managed by Credit Valley Conservation.