What Are Wildflowers, Native Plants, and Garden Flowers?

People are promoting growing natives, but what do they mean by native plants? How are those different from garden flowers? And are they different from wildflowers?

What are Native Plants, Garden Flowers and Wildflowers?

Native Plants

Native plants in North America are plants that were growing where you live when Europeans arrived. However, people don’t use the term that simply. The idea of native plant is intended as the opposite of an introduced plant, one that we brought to North America from elsewhere in the world in the last 400 years. Only a handful of plants are considered native in both North America and somewhere else in the world, so usually the distinction between plants that are native and those that are introduced, also called exotic, is easy. Furthermore, although about 18,000 plants are native to North America, “grow natives” usually refers to plants with colorful flowers and a few handsome shrubs and trees, not just any native plant. 

Garden Flowers

Garden flowers are plants usually found in gardens, planted and tended by humans. While this is not a precise term, there certainly are plants typical of gardens and not usually seen elsewhere, for example daffodils, lilacs, and roses. Garden plants are a diverse group, gathered from all over the world, that people like in their gardens. A few are American natives, for example echinacea and columbine. Many garden flowers have been bred to be better for gardens than their wild ancestors. Typical improvements for gardens are larger flowers and new colors of flowers and leaves. Garden flowers may seem ordinary, but most people like them and they are easy to grow in yards and gardens.

Wildflowers

Wildflowers grow without any help from people. Wildflowers are plants nobody planted, they planted themselves. They are the bright blossoms along the hiking trail. “Grow wildflowers” is a contradiction, because as soon as you plant it, it is no longer wild. Maybe, if milkweeds came up from seeds you gathered from a meadow last fall, they are still wildflowers. But when you buy a package of wildflower seeds or plants, they have to have been planted in huge beds by commercial growers, in order to have enough to ship plants to you or put into seed packets, so those are not very wild. What does a seller mean calling the packet “wildflower seeds?” It says that these are the pretty flowers of romantic wild places. 

Wildflower generally implies a small plant with attractive flowers. Grasses are rarely thought of as wildflowers, nor are shrubs like sumac, or trees like green ash. Generally, we contrast wildflowers with garden flowers or crop plants. 

Recognizing whether a plant is native requires knowing its origin. Botanists argue about plant origins and produce learned opinions. Garden flower is a much looser concept, used for plants growing in gardens and can include almost any plant found in a garden. Wildflower is a plant growing wild somewhere, pretty much any plant that catches your eye in an uncultivated area. 

Why Grow Native Plants?

Natives are promoted over introduced flowers for gardens and yards for a series of reasons. 

First, we have lately realized that in natural ecosystems in North America, especially in the food chain of insects eating plants and birds eating insects, exotic plants do not substitute for native plants. By growing so many introduced plants that native insects cannot eat, we have significantly reduced the food resources of wild birds, leading to a great decrease in number. We have almost 3 billion fewer birds than in 1970, a loss of 25%. There are similar drops in other native animals, for example monarch butterflies. If bird and insect loss is due to lack of native plants, then we can reverse the trend by increasing the number of native plants. Since so much of North American land is in people’s yards today, convincing gardeners to plant natives makes lots of sense.

Natives are also worth planting for regional pride. The plants that are native to your area are different from the plants native somewhere else. Arizonans can grow amazing cactus species in their front yards; people in Florida can grow huge magnolias; in New York there is a wonderful group of forest native plants such as columbines and trilliums. They cannot trade; few of the cacti will survive in Florida or New York, drought will kill magnolias in Arizona and frost will kill them in New York, the forest natives of New York won’t survive the desert or subtropical Florida. Each place’s natives are unique. Grow natives to promote the special plants of your region.

Thirdly, natives are adapted to the place they are native and grow well there. They do not require supplemental anything, for example, neither water nor fertilizer. Where it is important to conserve water or keep nitrogen out of the streams, native plants are a superior choice. They are easy to grow where they are native. 

Plants in Gardens

Garden flowers and crop plants are generally much tamer than wildflowers. Some do not reproduce at all. Natives and naturalized exotics both produce enough seeds or shoots to maintain their numbers without human help, and usually that means that they spread, requiring control. Cultivars are varieties of natives that have been bred to be better garden plants, which can be anything from having bigger flowers to mildew resistance. Most cultivars of natives are equivalent to wild natives in terms of supporting the food chain; only rarely have they been so modified that insects, butterflies for example, are no longer attracted to them. 

What Plants are Wildflowers?

What is a wildflower is somewhat tricky. All garden flowers were once wildflowers. Then humans brought them into their gardens and they become domesticated, so we call them garden flowers or crop plants. American native plants were wildflowers quite recently; none grew in a European-style garden before 1492 and only a few were domesticated by Native Americans before that (although we keep recognizing other ones). Many plants native to Europe and Asia have been domesticated for millennia, tea roses and peonies for example. But a garden flower can become a wildflower if it sends seeds into uncultivated land and maintains itself there. Many plants introduced to North America from elsewhere in the world have escaped from gardens and naturalized, and are now growing wild in North America, for example ox-eye daisies, Queen Ann’s lace, and dames’ rocket. Seen along the trail, they are wildflowers. Only if you ask about their geographic origins would you know that some of our pretty wildflowers were introduced from Europe.

Consequently, native and wildflower are not quite the same thing. 

Native Plants Have Limited Ranges

One more complication in defining the terms. North America is very complex, with different growing conditions and so different plants in different regions, at a minimum, the East, the Midwest, the West, the Southwest, and the South. These regions have different native plants, garden plants, and wildflowers. Calling the California poppy a native wildflower in New York is wrong; the California poppy grows naturally only as far east as Nevada. Conversely, the red Canada columbine is distributed across the Eastern forests, but was never found in the Rocky Mountains, let alone in California. No one wildflower or native plant seed mix fits the whole United States. Gardeners are becoming much more discerning about this, choosing local natives or wildflowers, not a mishmash of wildflower seeds from all over.

Outlook for Wildflowers, Native Plants, and Garden Flowers

All of this discussion has been very good for gardening. Now people are looking at dozens of American native plants for their gardens that were previously ignored. North America has dozens of penstemon and columbine and aster species which offer fascinating variations in color and shape. Most of America’s native plants are still wildflowers, rarely grown in gardens; lots of opportunities are out there.