I take back what I said about buying wildflowers at Lowes. Thanks to Jeff Frontz, I got a good education about the difference of “nursery grown” and “nursery propagated”. It seems the nursery that supplies Lowes with their wildflowers has collected them from the wild and then resold them. This depleted or wipes out native populations of these plants. They have even been in trouble with the USFWS for collecting and selling venus flytraps from the wild.
So I guess the action we should take is to tell Lowes we want natives but only those that are “nursery propogated”.
Here are some websites and input from Jeff:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/natives/msg0617012515531.html
is where there is a discussion about wild-collected vs. nursery-propagated and (about half-way down, July 7 at 8:46).
http://southeast.fws.gov/news/1999/r99-087.html is the press release on the owner’s SECOND conviction on trafficking in endangered species.
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/woodland/msg0209172431638.html
talks specifically about Lowe’s (it wanders on and off topic, so keep scanning until the end) and also mentions the provenance issues that the supplier has faced.
But, really, it’s the labeling that clinches it for me– nurseries that actually propagate their stock plaster their packaging/ads with this fact. They know that folks will pay for the assurance that they’re not contributing to the depredation of wild areas. Not trumpeting the fact that something is actually nursery propagated would be tantamount to an organic food producer leaving “USDA Organic” off of their packaging.
Jeff