taking stock of our native flora and newcomers, with nybg’s robert naczi

WHEN YOU’RE TALKING plants and not people, how do you figure out who lives where? You can’t send census takers door to door to get a head count, but doing so is a critical step in devising conservation strategies in a changing world, among other key goals. A New York Botanical Garden botanist is coordinating such an effort.

Dr. Robert Naczi is the Arthur J. Cronquist Curator of North American Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, where the classic reference to the plants of all or part of 22 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces is being fully updated, family by family, in a massive ongoing undertaking.

We talked about how things have shifted in nature since the last edition 25 years ago, including the dramatic increase of established invasive plants in the landscape. I learned about native geraniums and orchids, and about various surprising relatives of milkweed (including vinca!).

Read along as you listen to the Nov. 26, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

Q. The title of the manual, “The New Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada.” Oh boy. [Laughter.]

A. Yes.

Q. It’s a mouthful.

A. It is.

Q. Many users know the reference as “Gleason and Cronquist” for its previous editors, but tell us a little about the history of the book and why it’s so important.

A. Sure. Thank you. This book is in a lineage that began at New York Botanical Garden with our Founding Director, Nathaniel Lord Britton. He had a project when he began the garden and he published the first volume of that, the “Illustrated Flora,” in