Buttonbush, a Maryland native plant
Good news for Maryland! The Maryland General Assembly passed HB950 which is legislation designed to establish the Maryland Native Plants Program. The goal is to encourage and promote the use and sale of plants native to Maryland at certain businesses and to educate the public on native plants. The Department of Agriculture will administer the program in coordination with the University of Maryland Extension (UME). The UME will hire an extension agent to serve as a native plant specialist for certain educational purposes. The UME also will create a specific website on native plants. A commercial Maryland native plant list will be established as well as a voluntary certification program for growers and retailers to be identified either as a Maryland Native Plant Grower or a Maryland Native Plant Retailer or both.
The bill has been approved by the governor and will take effect in July 2024. Here is a current list of Maryland Native Plants on the UME website.
Thank you for the nice shout-out for this worthwhile legislation. You might want to replace the Fothergilla photo, though, because this genus isn’t native to Maryland (see https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/show-taxon.php?&plantname=fothergilla&family=&limit=1&offset=0&taxonid=64761).
Thank you for commenting. I was thinking that fothergilla was native to Maryland because it is listed on the University of Maryland Extension site. https://extension.umd.edu/resource/recommended-native-plants-maryland
If you click through on the picture of the pant on the MD website you’ll see the first sentence is ‘not native to MD’. Some plants on that list are included because they’re native to our region but are not actually native to our state.
Thanks, can you list a few native to Maryland in the comments section?