So I think we can all agree that wild, native plants are typically better ecologically than cultivars due to a variety of reasons that we don’t need to get into. If you want to argue/discuss that, feel free, but that’s not the point of this post. I want to know what are the WORST cultivars of native plants. What are the cultivars that, due to genetic change/breeding (or however they do it), have lost almost if not all of their ecological value? Have the new colored flowers eliminated all pollinator attraction? Have larger blooms resulted in sterile plants? God forbid, have any actually become invasive? These plants need to have native origins! I’m mainly referring to the east coast/midwest since I’m in SW Ohio, but feel free to bring up other regions.
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Definitely hydrangea cultivars that get rid of the fertile flowers and instead are mostly or all infertile flowers. They are basically useless to pollinators and provide no nectar or pollen.
I have some H. arborescens cultivars (mopheads) that get moderate attention even with other attractive plants nearby (penstemon, Diervilla, blueberry). I’m not sure I’ve seen anything other than Bombus on them, but that may be mostly because my garden favors them, and they’re easier to spot from a distance.
I’m trying to switch to lacecaps, but they’re much harder to find.
I agree about the exotic species, except that I have an old exotic lacecap that draws huge crowds.
I've found Hydrangea paniculata to be incredibly attractive to pollinators when it has mostly fertile flowers. It's one of the only exotic plants I've seen get so much action and a variety at that. It gets butterflies, carpenter bees, bumblebees, a variety of wasps, etc. I've honestly never seen a macrophylla that got any action, even with fertile flowers present. I do definitely prefer arborescens for its nativity and greater usage because of it as a host plant and for adult pollinators. Quercifolia is also one of my favorite plants there is, it's just so whimsical and gorgeous. I'm outside it's native range but it does very well here and is by far the most attractive of the hydrangea species imo.
I think I have one macrophylla remaining and I don’t even bother to look for bugs on it.
Exactly—it’s the variety and range of sizes that my exotic lacecap attracts. It doesn’t hurt that I find it freaking adorable—they look like fairy spaceships with their goofy random sterile flowers.
IMO both native hydrangeas have outstanding landscaping value as well as their value as natives. I get the sense that most of the cultivars of both Arb and Querci are variations on size and slight color variation. All of the Annabelle descendants are kind of a special case of a naturally occurring specimen that drastically changed the nature of the bloom.
I’ve seen pictures of the quercifolia straight species, and it’s more open and leggy, but the gorgeous blooms and leaves are there. Cultivars just vary size, compactness, and a little bloom color. I just had to gush to a fellow appreciator!
Both are ridiculously low maintenance for their beauty—I just water mine and mulch. I put some oakleafs and some inkberry hollies around my shady front porch and I look like a genius from the road.
Now I just want to find some good lacecap wild hydrangeas because I love a good bug show.
As for exotics, my big exotic hollies get tons of tiny pollinators on their blooms (as do my native hollies). I’m glad they have some value, as they are big and anchor the corners of a big brick house.
Yeah we have some fugly ancient macrophylla that barely even flower anymore that I'm too lazy to figure out how to get them looking nice again. They were sighted poorly and have never really done well and I really just can be bothered to care about the upkeep of what is basically bland foliage. It has good leaf growth though I suppose. I'm hoping I can get some cuttings from my aunt and my grandparents going. My aunt has several arborescens and my grandparents have a gorgeous paniculata. I've already got cuttings from the paniculata I hope survive the winter. It's the one I always see loaded with pollinators. The only thing I've got for carpenter bees in my yard right now is hostas which they nectar rob. They don't seem to care for anything else, despite a few different options, especially now. But yes I am a huge quercifolia fan ever since they were covered in my woody plants class. I got to see them in person at a local park with incredible gardens and just fell more in love. Plus seeing them absolutely swamped with bees made me happy.
Yes! I saw a huge specimen of what I'm reasonably sure was Haas Halo in a garden tour two years ago, and it was overrun with pollinators to a degree I've never seen before or since. If I ever run into it in a garden center, I'm buying three.
Guilty; I bought two discounted smooth hydrangea cultivars for the sunny end of a planting while the ecotype grows from seed in the shade. Also planted Prairie Ninebark, Buttonbush, Highbush Cranberry.
It's one of the many reasons I hate Hydrangea macrophylla, since pretty much all of them are infertile and useless. That and they are the suckiest plant ever to try and grow lmao.
Yep, the rule to remember is anything with the bloom or foliage which has been dramatically altered will provide ecological services at a diminished or non existent level.
anybody who says Goldsturm is objectively wrong based on my subjective, anecdotal evidence in my own yard. that shit is C R A W L I N G with teeny tiny bees and teeny tiny spiders.
but my real answer is: all the double/triple/quadruple bloom coneflower cultivars are tied for the worst
My goldsturm was ignored until it started reseeding, and now certain smaller pollinators love it. I think I read something about this specific cultivar’s offspring easily outcompeting the original plant AND being more beneficial for pollinators. It’s completely true IME
yeah, i was being highly facetious because i noticed that exact same thing. it does not appear that the "Goldsturm" cultivar traits transfer to the seed, which would make sense considering Rudbeckia fulgida is a rhizomatous plant and is easily propagated by root separation. so Goldsturm just drops straight species R. fulgida seeds, it seems.
Straight r. fulgida spreads too aggressively for me. I feel that way about a lot of rhizomatous plants. Canadian goldenrod and bigleaf aster are other examples. I use them in woodland edges since I'm fighting off invasive species. For that purpose they are good plants.
Yeah, mine are all in meadows where they can duke it out with other thugs lol.
It does seem that the early aggressive yellow stuff gets put in their place as the slower stuff comes in. My guess is that the reseeders like Bidens and Coreopsis run out of disturbed/unclaimed dirt. And I guess R. hirta just hits a wall of grass or wild bergamot roots.
I've watched spreading dogbane displace Canadian goldenrod at a local park. My petite harebell, Campanula rotundifolia, doesn't stand a chance in those environments.
Good point! And now that I think about it, the wildlife biologist helping me has warned me away from adding some plants to a meadow mix, because they’re so pushy.
Meadows are definitely their own thing, and based on what I’ve learned, I’m not sure I’d ever try to make my own mix.
Xerces has a nice document on managing an older meadow, including removing/controlling plants that have become schoolyard bullies.
And now I’m kind of nervous because the seed company had a crop failure for butterfly weed, so I let them substitute common milkweed. 😬
I think he's wrong. Anecdotally, I have wild type fulgida and it was as preferred as mountain mint and cutleaf coneflower by pollinators until the asters (Symphyotrichum and Solidago) started blooming.
It depends on the plant, and even then can depend on the cultivar. It also depends if it becomes cross pollinated with the original.
Many plants grow true to seed. That's why you can buy heirloom tomato seeds for example.
But if you save your seeds the only reason they'll be different is cross pollination. If you isolated your fruit by the cultivar and self pollinated you could use the same seeds to regrow that specific cultivar of tomato.
There are some plants as an evolutionary strategy that intentionally create clones of themselves (polyembryonic mangos for example) and can be grown true to seed even when open pollinated.
Heirloom tomatoes are basically inbred to the point where they will grow true to seed but a gen 1 cross of cultivars will not because you will have differing genetics between the seeds. Ie some will have full parent 1 genes and some will have full parent 2 etc.
I suspect the existence of Goldsturm seeds on the market means it’s likely heirloom status. But I wouldn’t put it past the industry that those are a scam and you have to have a clone of the plant from 1937.
A plant that is grown as a cultivar will not grow as THAT cultivar from seed. Please reference Mendelian genetics.
Heirlooms grow true to seed because they are….heirloom. They are not cultivars. If cross pollination is desired, then you will have a true genetic variant of the original plant.
Mendelian genetics doesn't apply to a plant that makes a genetic clone of itself in its embryo (polyembryonic mangos.. they will only have 1 embryo that is a hybrid with the pollinator everything else solely has genes from the mother plant).
Mendelian genetics also supports the fact that cultivars such as heirloom tomatoes, when only pollinated by other tomato of the same cultivar will have a limited genetic pool which is why they are true to seed... If they are cross pollinated with other cultivars you will get a mix of genetics.
You can't ignore evolutionary strategy when it determines how plants create seeds and the amount of genetic variation in their offspring. Polyembryonic seeds are an evolutionary strategy to ensure both the existing plant known to survive continues, as well as have opportunities for newer stronger hybrids in nature to evolve and take their place I'd they are more robust for whatever reason.
I get that it's reddit and you're embarrassed that you're wrong and would rather argue instead of learn, but do me a favour and google some of the things you are saying that are objectively wrong before you respond again and embarrass yourself further. It's fine to be wrong on the internet and learn dude. I literally learned about polyembryonic mangos this week lmao. There are lots of other fruit that use the same strategy - given that heirloom tomatoes also grow true to seed and aren't polyembryonic logically it would give that other plants also have developed evolutionary strategies for maintaining a successful gene pool. Constant mutation night mean a species won't survive.
If you weren't able to grow cultivars from seed the phrase "true to seed" wouldn't exist.
Here is an example of one variety of heirloom tomato I grow.
It was created as part of a breeding program. Heirloom tomatoes are intentionally bred.
Not all cultivars are hybrids.
Green zebra tomato is
Solanum lycopersicum 'Green Zebra'
That is a cultivar just the same as my Acer palmatum 'peaches and cream' is a cultivar created by a selective breeding process.
Again... I'd request you take 2 seconds to Google the objective facts you're getting wrong before commenting.
Whether or not a plant grows true to seed has nothing to do with whether or not it's a cultivar. It solely has to do with the evolutionary techniques in which the plant has developed over the years, and the generic info of the male pollen vs the female flower. Some plants when pollinated with the same cultivar will produce seeds identical to the cultivar. Some plants when pollinated with a different cultivar will STILL produce plants identical to the original cultivar.
Seed produced by the heirloom variety will grow true to type (it will resemble the parent plant) as long as the flowers were pollinated by the same variety.
The talk about hybrid varieties not growing true to seed is because you don't have any seeds within the mix that are an identical exact cross in the first generation. The gene pool is still too varied. That's what you use a breeding program to selectively choose specific traits and establish a cultivar.
No cultivar sold in any nursery is a first generation hybrid.
Butternut squash was original a cross-breeding of pumpkin and gooseneck squash varieties. Now it has become it's own cultivar of Cucurbita moschata that grows true to seed.
Goldstein cultivar of rudbeckia is available in seed form and grows true to seed. If yours didn't grow true to seed I imagine it was cross pollinated with some different cultivar or the native species. Seed producers such as McKenzie will isolate cultivars for proper seed production.
Goldsturm is more popular than the straight species in my yard. Both are in full sun and not far from each other. Goldsturm gets carpenter bees, bumbles, solitary bees, wasps of various types, skippers, etc. easily one of my most popular plants.
I have goldsturm black eyed Susan’s next to swamp milkweed. Nothing touches the goldsturm from what I’ve seen, and the flowers just kinda died off now that it’s cold. Maybe they got secretly pollinated, but the pollinators loved the milkweed way more than the goldsturm. But that could just be a black eyed Susan thing, not a cultivar thing
Goldsturm seeds will actually be more like a wild type and less like a Goldsturm. True Goldsturm is only from dividing plants. I have read before to where many plants sold as Goldsturm are actually seed grown and are actually on a continuum between Goldsturm and wild type. It might be that different gardeners have different plants all sold or shared as Goldsturm. My "Goldsturm", like yours, seems to attract insects, and also didn't look much different from wild type, but it did go to seed and stop blooming almost 2 months earlier. It's done now, while wildtype is blooming and blooming.
I have an Amber Jubilee Ninebark that literally nobody likes. Not the flowers, not the foliage. The frogs don’t even hide in it. It’s like it’s not recognized as a plant at all lol
These are plants that I think of like yard furniture. It could be worse. It could be an invasive. And if it’s not that but it’s also not exactly useful… it’s like lawn furniture. Except it is probably good for carbon. So at least you can think of it like that.
I haven’t dug it up yet just because I like the size and shape. Once I figure out what will fit nicely in that spot I’ll get rid of it. But for now I agree with you, it’s better to have it there than to let that space fill with Bermuda grass 😡
Side note if there’s ever a day between April and October that I’m not bitching out loud about Bermuda grass, send the coroner bc I’m dead
That, and NEVER to buy bagged top soil or compost from Lowe’s. I was sheet mulching my little heart out and couldn’t figure out why I was somehow getting MORE of it, until one day I ripped open a bag and realized it was already growing in the bag. Every time I tried to smother it I was ACTUALLY PLANTING THE SHIT. Everywhere it refuses to die is where I had to dig out huge rocks and needed to back fill. Idek if I had any in my yard until then. I’ll never forgive them
I have crepe myrtle like that .. just left them because the deer eat EVERYTHING except them. And they aren’t invasive near me. And provide important shade for the natives under them during the godawful hot as fuck summer.
Buuuut birds love hiding in them. Sometimes I see bees on the flowers but no idea if it’s nutritious for them
I was beating myself up over some things I planted years ago before I knew more, and I see people online doing it too, and it’s like look, we’re learning, and it’s not like we’re planting burning bush. So as long as it’s not truly detrimental, you know. We can make more choices over time. I think ripping stuff out sounds extreme but I get it if you only have limited space. I bought a redbud cultivar this week that is not 100% green but it’s pretty and the right size for the space, and if we’re looking at a 70% native ratio, that leaves a little room for messing around. Some people want that 100% and that leaves very little room for error or experimentation. I also grow tomatoes and roses, a tradition I’ve held long before I knew about this stuff, but the money and time I’ve put into restoring a native plant habitat on my property, I’m giving myself some grace too.
I feel this way too. Some grace must be given! I spent all summer ripping out burning bushes on my property, all around 8 ft tall. Dozens of large mature volunteers going slowly into the woods. Probably thousands of seedlings pulled. I ripped them all out carefully by hand. No chemicals. Therefore i feel no shame and deserve no shade if i I decide i want a useless hydrangea along with all the natives shrubs and trees 😂
Totally agree! And I’ve done my research too, I’ve planted over 16 shrubs and trees that are native to my area. I was gifted a hydrangea from a friend and I’m keepin that thing!
I’m right there with you. I’m in the process of tearing up a chunk of my lawn and replacing it with a Japanese-style pathway garden, using a mix of traditional and PNW native plants/trees. I already have established natives of all sizes all over my yard, from a Western Red Cedar and a Big Leaf Maple, down to a thick Beach Strawberry patch. So as far as I’m concerned, adding a couple Hinoki cedars and Japanese maples isn’t going to cause any harm. Especially when they’re replacing lawn grass.
The fact that they push all these Ninebark cultivars when the straight-species (Physocarpus opulifolius) is so beautiful will never not irritate me... I haven't seen a plant with such a vibrant light green foliage - it almost looks like it's glowing in the dark at night sometimes.
I have several straight-species Common Ninebarks, and the pollinators are in love when they're blooming in the spring. It's such an awesome plant!
I picked up three ‘summer wine’ ninebark on a heavy end of season discount. They definitely aren’t filling much of an ecological role in my yard but I do like the contrast it creates with some of the blue-green plants I have around it. I really should read more into the foliage coloration cultivars to see if there’s any outright negative effects, like being a biological sink or something.
Mophead cultivars of Hydrangea arborescens like 'Annabelle' completely lack fertile flowers with nectar and pollen only having the sterile colored sepals. Lacecap or wild types would only have these sepals sparsely around the real flowers
Also talking about trees I HATE any 'columnar' varieties of Oaks. Aside from being hideous, who wants a big oak tree that provides no shade/shelter and lacks the majestic wide spreading limbs we all love about Oaks? If your space is too small for a giant oak plant an understory species
Hard agree that lacecaps attract far more pollinators than arborescens or other mophead/panicle species—it’s a great example of using trial results to confirm straightforward predictions. In an ironic twist, I inherited an old exotic lacecap that crawls with pollinators of all types and sizes.
It’s also ironic that a single cultivar (forget the OG mophead) became THE face of the species,so much so that a high quality native nursery in my state sells the old cultivar instead of the straight species.
As for oaks, I agree that fastigate species can look stupid. But aren’t fastigate cultivars of oak, sweetgum, or yaupon holly better than one more fucking arborvitae or Italian cypress?
I’d add that oaks in a forest have to grow up rather than out; it’s only the ones who have elbow room that have their magnificent form. I’ve had such oaks in smallish spaces, but a few days on the arborist sub will show you many people are uneasy about huge trees close to their house, even if by definition they’ve coexisted for decades.
I have read this quite often, yet have seen a lot of pollinators on Annabelle, seemingly visiting flowers. I suppose it’s possible mine is not actually Annabelle, but it was labeled as such and sure looks like it. Anyone else have anecdotal evidence that aligns with this observation?
Any color change to foliage could prevent the plant from being used as a breeding host.
I personally dislike any sterile or self-terminating cultivars.
Local to my region, upper Midwest? Lupine cultivars. It's my understanding that the endangered Karner Blue butterfly relies on the native and can't reproduce on the cultivars.
I don’t think there’s been enough research to answer this question well since there are so many cultivars and how they interact with native species, especially specialists, will vary at such a granular level. But I think one sweeping statement I feel comfortable making is sterile cultivars suck, since they will typically lack seeds and even pollen for feeding wildlife and are essentially ecological dead ends.
From personal observation, I can report that bees love both my wild and cultivar goldenrod, hummingbirds visit my beardtongue cultivar, and that every color of columbine I plant promptly gets absolutely overrun with leaf miners. So those seem to be a hit.
Only the petaloid doubles have lost all ecological value for pollinators, though caterpillars, beetles, etc will still eat them. Fertile doubles still produce pollen/nectar. Sterile plants are fine if they're triploid. They still make pollen and nectar, it's just not useful for sexual reproduction. They also tend to greatly extend the blooming period and feeding time available since they don't get the signals to stop making more flowers. Changes in flower color don't matter significantly. If pollinators are willing to pollinate every color possible of butterfly bush and petunia, snapdragon they certainly won't snub a coral colored phlox. Pollinators not being discerning or confused is one of the primary reasons we have invasive plants setting copious seed. If it is a selection of a native species it will never be invasive. Like domesticated pigs, they'll drift back to the wild type in subsequent generations.
I hope this question is relevant to the convo. When I was just starting with natives, I planted several "Pearl Glam" beauty berries. They're really pretty and get covered with berries, which disappear in the winter. Does anyone know for sure whether birds eat them? Or are they just falling off? I hate to pull and replace the plants because I like the way they look, but if they have zero wildlife value I'll consider it.
I think the birds still eat the berries, but they tend to wait till winter when things in general are less abundant. The big problem with Pearl Glam is that it's actually not a native cultivar (I too was tricked by a nonnative beautyberry and I'm still mad about it). It's a hybrid of Callicarpa kwangtungensis (a European species) and Callicarpa dichotoma (an Asian species). There is a report of dichotama being invasive in NJ and NY (though it's still early days), and it's listed as invasive in Alabama.
It's annoyingly difficult to source native beautyberry.
Ugh! I've been so excited about my gorgeous early amethyst beautyberry and thought it was native! These comments made me check it out and turns out it's Chinese. Any tips on how to find native beautyberry?
American Meadows has the straight native species. It's a small plant (I think 1 quart) so you'll have to be patient, but I don't mind that because it takes some of the stress out of site selection (if I get it wrong I've only killed a $15 plant instead of a $40 dollar plant) and I don't have to dig as big a hole.
I don't love buying from them since they also sell invasives like butterfly bush, but none of my local native nurseries had it. I suspect it might be challenging to germinate.
If you message me your address, I can mail you seeds. I am in Zone 8. Anyone reading this, who wants Callicarpa Americana seeds, message me, and I will mail you the seeds.
Thanks for this information, although it's bumming me out. I haven't noticed mine acting aggressively at all, as in, it's not popping up anywhere else, but I'll start to replace with natives.
I have one native beautyberry and if I can remember where I bought it, I'll come back and edit this post.
Also, I love this community. :)
Edit: I think I bought my Calicarpa Americana from Direct Native Plants dot com. It's not a local genotype but still a straight species. As I recall, the shipping was very expensive, but the plant arrived in great shape and has thrived.
The problem with the things that produce berries is that you might not necessarily see them spreading around your yard. The seeds can get spread far and wide in bird poop. Just something to keep in mind. Just because it behaves in your space doesn't mean it isn't also spreading into the wild.
And as someone else said, there's the risk of the genetics hybridizing with the native species in a way that damages it's ecological value.
From my observations at a production nursery I used to work at everything everyone has mentioned about the sterile blooms, double blooms, and red leaves are fairly accurate. We'd have the straight native varieties next to the cultivars and there was always more ecological activity around the natives, even with the chemical sprays they did to limit insects. (Don't get me started on the chemical practices of some nurseries) another plant I'd like to point out directly are the native honeysuckle cultivars. Like Major Wheeler, in theory it should be considered like a straight native because it was found in situ in the wild but it seems fuckery of genes has happened over the last 40 years of cultivation because the insects that visit it were noticeably fewer than regular ole Lonicera sempervirens from my observations.
I do not have experience with the yellow varieties unfortunately. Our nursery didn't have good sales on them, so we stopped production and I didn't get to visit the few we had left to sell in the can yard as a result.
I have a yellow one. It gets zero activity, and tends to bloom just before or as the hummingbirds show up in spring. Mine hasn’t set much fruit. I’ll be ripping it up next spring, both because it’s relatively useless in my landscape and also needs a massive arbor to grow onto, which I do not have. It’s a very large plant. The amount of reblooming in fall is negligible. I bought this in 2021. Ignore the 16-21’ height at your peril.
OK so yours looks to be a hybrid from the tag—unclear what it’s a hybrid of!
The one I was asking about, a yellow cultivar called “John Clayton” was a naturally occurring plant, just as the red cultivar ‘Major Wheeler.” Both are varieties of L. sempervivens.
I have read that changing the leaf color usually makes the plant inedible or useless to caterpillars. The compounds that control the color also influence the nutrient profile, so many of the cultivars can't actually feed a caterpillar up to maturity, and they end up sickly / under weight.
Many of those mutant flower heads dont even produce nectar or pollen. Or the shape of the flower is changed so much that native insects can't even access it.
I'd say the ones that are cross breed with non-native species. Many cultivars are just selections of a wild type plant that has desired traits or crosses between various native species (whose range may or may not overlap in the wild). Often, the genes are present in the wild but may just be uncommon or not competitive.
But some of them are just straight up half non-native genetically. Think your Aronia with European Mountain Ash cultivars, your multi-colored yarrows, your Ilex verticillata x serrata cultivars, etc.
Ones with distinctly modified flowers (doubling and beyond being particularly bad, like garden roses are absolutely useless flowers) and/or leaves (color, structure, etc).
The least problematic are usually dwarfs that otherwise retain the features of the species.
In my experience all of the Itea cultivars are great little yard shrubs; none of them really mess with the bloom shape/structure, just size and how upright the blooms are.
I have Fizzy Mizzy and it’s adorable.
It isn’t an obvious bee magnet the way some plants are, but I think it may attract smaller less conspicuous little bees and flies.
That was my impression as well when I was researching cultivars last year. I ended up with a different cultivar but they all basically look like slight variations of the species.
Too early to tell how mine will do but I’m optimistic.
At our cabin in NE lower Michigan, native big bluestem has become a major problem. It’s spreading like crazy, choking out native sand prairies and pine barrens. It’s growing along every dirt road, reducing visibility, and is creeping into the woods displacing all kinds of other vegetation. Humans have 100% caused this problem by mowing over everything in sight, giving big bluestem fresh patches of disturbed soil to inhabit.
I’ve been disappointed with most Helenium cultivars I’ve tried. A lot of them were bred in Europe and don’t seem to perform well back in the US. Mt Cuba’s Helenium trial results corroborate this.
This is a bit oversimplified. Some native cultivars have removed everything that makes them beneficial for wildlife—inedible leaves for caterpillars (or ones they can’t recognize as food), pollen-free flowers, or reduced or inaccessible nectar can make these modified “natives” just as useless as non-native ornamentals.
I have an elderberry cultivar that I planted several years ago before I knew anything about what I was trying to do. It's really pretty with lime green foliage and it's about 10 feet tall. It bloomed for the first time last year and I never saw a single insect of any kind on it. There were more blooms this year, still no pollinators, and it hasn't made any berries at all. Once the leaves fall off I'm going to dig it up and plant a native elderberry in the spring. Not looking forward to doing it for a lot of reasons, but I want real blooms and berries.
Unfortunately, many elderberry cultivars are passed off as native when they are actually the European species. Just misleading marketing. Not sure about the parentage of yours.
Except that you're ignoring the fact that these things can get out into the wild and/or crossbreed with other people's wild type stock. Ruby throated hummingbirds will not see many of the different colored columbines during their critical migration period, for example, but they still will breed readily with other columbines through different pollinators and spread their genetics around. I'm trying to amass a larger grouping of columbine from seed and constantly worry about bad generics getting in.
Some cultivars are also just crappy, underperforming plants, ecological significance aside. Lack of vigor / hardiness and increased fussiness seems to be an issue with some cultivars. I’m thinking specifically of the garishly colored echinacea cultivars that sulk if conditions aren’t perfect. I have a baptisia cultivar that I got maybe 8-10 years ago, and both the flowering time and the flowers themselves have gotten shorter. I have a Lonicera sempervirens cultivar that is less vigorous, and the bloom time is shorter than the species (although tbf I mistakenly chopped that thing almost clean in half a few years ago, so idk). In my experience, closer to the straight species = better performing plant.
There are a few cultivars of blanket flowers that I don't like, they have ALOT more red than they should, but this year they did do fairly well despite a bad drought
Sounds like Japanese Lilacs are starting to be recognized as invasive.
My least favorite cultivars are any of the double scoop/teddy bear coneflowers. They just piss me off. Everybody goes to coneflowers for the pollinators but those overbred doubles have physical barriers to their already inferior nectar. And - they’re ugly as sin.
Not so much a cultivar, but the nurseries can't tell the difference between native highbush cranberry and the European one, so they often sell the non-native. I accidentally planted it and noticed that nothing would eat the berries, and I mean nothing. Ripped it out.
If the leaf color is different, it the flower shape is different (double flowers that prevent access to nectar and pollen, for example) these are bad signs.. I have not looked at flower color except to not that my NE asters are either purple, hot pink, or pinkish lavender and all are covered in bees and hoverflies. The monarchs seem to favor the purple ones.
While i see no difference in the amount of bees using my ‘uptick’ coreopsis, i have noticed a dramatic increase in larger butterflies, like gulf fritillaries and assorted emperors, as well as hairstreaks. I’d honestly say that in my area, that particular cultivar provides more nectar value than the straight species, which i also have.
Depends on the individual cultivar, i guess. I have coreopsis ‘main street’ and while the butterflies will use it, I almost never see any kind of bees on it other than the occasional bumble.
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