You might know to steer clear of green potatoes and rhubarb leaves. That’s because they produce toxins that can make humans sick.
Articles on Native plants
Displaying 1 - 20 of 70 articles
Woody meadows can create green corridors in urban landscapes at much less cost than traditional methods. Now keen gardeners can plant their own.
Uniquely colored flowers with big blooms might make for an aesthetically pleasing garden, but they can be unhelpful to pollinators. Careful consideration can help you plan a colorful and eco-friendly garden.
There is a wide range of simple actions anyone can take to regenerate and conserve biodiversity right at home.
Australia’s environment is brutal. If you don’t already know what you’re looking for, it can be easy to miss these seemingly unremarkable species.
A biologist explains what to focus on if you’re designing a garden with pollinators in mind − and what you don’t need to worry about.
Will protecting monarch butterflies under the Endangered Species Act improve their chance of surviving? Not necessarily, 2 entomologists caution.
Māori used all parts of raupō for weaving and food, but the plant also kept lakes healthy. This connection between cultural and ecological roles means its fate is closely linked with people.
There’s a widespread argument that ‘poachers’ are responsible for the scarcity of wild ginseng. But a scholar who has interviewed diggers explains that most of them are good stewards.
The need to restore native vegetation is clear, but we can’t properly repair nature without good, diverse supplies of native seeds.
NoMowMay is a catchy concept, but it doesn’t provide the food that native North American pollinators need or lasting support for them.
This episode explores how colonial history has affected what we plant and who gets to garden. We also discuss practical gardening tips with an eye to Indigenous knowledge.
Each year, hungry plant-eating animals do billions of dollars of damage to valuable plants. We need prevention methods that don’t involve killing them.
Today, these plants are iconic to the Australian bush. But banksias and their many relatives originated in far-away shores 130 million years ago.
The father of Khoisan revivalism became a public historian as his academic work met activism.
Native common wildflowers provide large amounts of pollen and nectar for insects – but many are undervalued by the public.
Whether riding on the feathers of birds or evolving on Gondwana, Australia’s plants got here in very different ways
Native plants help damaged landscapes by stabilizing soil, fighting invasive species and sheltering pollinators. Two horticulture experts explain what they’re doing to help develop new seed sources.
They’re beautiful in bloom, but Callery pear trees crowd out native plants and turn productive open land into woody thickets.
Plant breeders must now engage with kaitiaki if special relationships with a plant have been asserted. But Māori have no say on the introduction of exotic plants that could become invasive.
Top contributors
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Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne
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Assistant Professor of Biology, Baldwin Wallace University
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Associate professor, University of Canterbury
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Associate Professor, University of Southern Queensland
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Adjunct Associate Professor, Murdoch University
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Research Fellow, Curtin University
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John Curtin Distinguished Professor, Curtin University
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Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Edith Cowan University
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Curator of Zoological Collections and Assistant Professor, Western University
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PhD Candidate, Australian National University
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Emeritus professor, Murdoch University
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Adjunct Assoc. Professor, The University of Western Australia
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Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Environment & Evolution, La Trobe University
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Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University
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Laboratory and Technical Support Officer, Australian Tropical Herbarium, James Cook University