Species evolution due to climate change

Today’s Boston Globe carried an interesting article about how climate change has caused and will continue to cause species to evolve as they adapt to new conditions. It seems that scientists have identified five species that have already evolved due to climate change: the pitcher plant mosquito; Canadian red squirrels; the European blackcap (a bird); the fruit fly; and the European great tits (yes that’s really its name, and it’s a bird).

At left is a photo of the purple pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea, home to the pitcher plant mosquito, Wyeomyia smithii. (Photo courtesy of Janet Novak and the Connecticut Botanical Society.) The mosquito lives exclusively in bogs where the purple pitcher plant grows. Purple pitcher plants can live up to 100 years, eating insects that drown in its pitcher-shaped, water-filled leaves. This particular mosquito has a symbiotic relationship with the pitcher plant, because it doesn’t die in the leaves and actually feeds on decaying insects that have drowned.

Native plant resource

Do other gardeners have the same problem that I do of finding specific plants? I’ll hear about a particularly cool native plant, fall in love with it, must have it…..and then I can’t find it anywhere. This is very annoying. I do not like spending a million dollars for a bareroot plant in a fancy catalog. And I intensely dislike driving all over New England to look for plants or randomly calling nurseries in the phone book.

But I found a cool tool while doing some research recently for a garden that I’m creating for a client. It’ll be very useful for those of you (in the northeast part of the country) that wants to to find native plants at a nursery near you.

Partnership limits invasive species & promotes natives

Poking around on The Nature Conservancy’s website, I found a recent press release about a partnership between TNC and Meijer, a department store in the Midwest that apparently has a pretty big nursery business in the spring and summer. I think it’s an interesting and positive development in light of our recent discussion on how the “green industry” should deal with invasive species.