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Some are cultivated from naturally occurring variations that improve the look or performance of the species. Any cultivar that is derived from a locally sourced species plant is a nativar. Nativars have been developed for every type of plant: trees, woody shrubs, forbs, and grasses. The value of the term nativar in this context is a huge benefit to growers and garden centers who wanted to connect to the customer seeking a new product. It has exploded through effective marketing that the average gardener can understand. Until the value of native plants was tied to these concepts, the movement was localized, small, and valued primarily for restoration. The native plant movement is still a strong influence on the market, owing not only to the early adopters who started it but to causes: saving pollinators and growing healthy food. Nativars and straight species work well together.
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Stacys officinalis ‘Hummelo’ and Allium cernuum. “Whether that means a more compact size, cleaner foliage, better color, or a tidier appearance, nativars solve problems that can arise” with the genotype. “Nativars allow us to retain the ecological benefits of native species while making them adaptable and accessible for a modern landscape,” McEnaney says.
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Though the movement was small at first, Armitage recalls, it “was going full steam before breeders even knew what was happening.” He coined the term “nativar” to show customers that the industry was offering what they wanted: garden plants developed from documented native sources, known in the scientific community as genotypes. The native plant movement, Armitage says, is “one of the very few times when the horticulture industry was swayed by the gardening community.” Usually, new plants developed by breeders influence what gardeners buy, but gardeners had been demanding plants with local or regional provenance. Its purpose: to connect the industry to the powerful influence that the native plant movement was having on trends in buying. The horticulturist Allan Armitage recalls that he coined the term “nativar” around the time he wrote Armitage’s Garden Perennials, which was published in 2000. The term is not scientific but has value to the industry in helping identify selected, hybridized, or crossbred varieties of native plants. The Fiber Optics buttonbush is what is known as a nativar.
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It has a reliably smaller size at five to six feet high and a branching habit that keeps it compact and rounded, while retaining all the desired features of the straight species. Bailey trialed the plant, a process that takes several years, and brought it to market in 2017. Fiber Optics is a species mutation discovered by an inventory employee in the bare-root fields of Bailey Nurseries, says the company’s public relations and communications specialist, Ryan McEnaney. Cultivars are plants produced by selective breeding or vegetative propagation to achieve better traits for the landscape. The straight species can be quite large at 12 feet high or more, and it has an annoying habit of sending branches in all directions, so it looks willy-nilly rather quickly if it’s not pruned regularly and often.īut here come Sputnik, Sugar Shack, and Fiber Optics, cultivars of buttonbush that represent a tamed C. Although everything else about this shrub is right, its growth pattern and size are not. Yet it is not commonly used in built landscapes. This native of the Midwest and East Coast is easily grown and little bothered by pests in the garden. Hummingbirds and butterflies favor the plant for its nectar, and 24 species of birds seek it out for its small, round nuts that persist into winter. It’s especially useful in wet areas and rain gardens where it absorbs excess water and even tolerates standing water. FROM THE JULY 2019 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.Ĭommon buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) is a medium-sized shrub that is appealing in sunny areas of the landscape because of its glossy green leaves unusual fragrant, round, spiky flowers and rust-red fall color. And what isn’t? Designers and pollinators are finding out.