Native Plants

Q. Who is Mr. Smarty Plants?

A: There are those who suspect Wildflower Center volunteers are the culpable and capable culprits. Yet, others think staff members play some, albeit small, role. You can torture us with your plant questions, but we will never reveal the Green Guru's secret identity.

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Wednesday - August 01, 2012

From: Toronto, ON
Region: Select Region
Topic: Plant Lists
Title: Native Habitat Lists from Toronto ON
Answered by: Barbara Medford

QUESTION:

Dear Mr. Smarty Pants. I see that you provide Native Habitat information on the plant detail sheets. Would I be able to find a full list of habitat types anywhere on this website? Thanks,

ANSWER:

The short answer to this question is "no."

Because we are honestly not sure what you are asking, we went to a website called What is Habitat? We didn't read the whole site, but it has a number of references on a list on the left-hand side of the homepage. This site was apparently for educators striving to help students understand what we call ecosystems.

The native habitat information on any of our webpages on specific plants will have come from some list of specialist information. If we have the Habitat information, it will be on that page. We also have (for Texas) lists of plants by Ecoregion. This list is on our Recommended Species page, along with a lot of other lists and links. In fact, not even all the webpages on Texas plants like Tecoma stans (Yellow bells) or Lupinus texensis (Texas bluebonnet) have habitat information on them.

Obviously, we are going to have more information on Texas than most other places because that's where the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, home of Mr. Smarty Plants, is. But no list, regardless of where it is based, is going to have information on all the plants native to that habitat. So, because this is an interesting question that this particular member of the Mr. Smarty Plants Team has not dealt with before, we are going to the Internet to see if we can find any helpful information for you in Toronto.

First we searched on "plant habitats in Toronto Ontario"

From the City of Toronto Environmental Portal Natural Spaces and Wildlife in Toronto

From the City of Toronto How to Select and Buy Native Plants

Then we tried "habitat types in Southern Ontario Canada"

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources Wildlife Management

Finally, if you choose a plant native to Ontario from our Native Plant Database, if there is no Habitat information on that page, go down the page to Additional Resources, and click on the link to Google on that plant. Any plant on our list that is listed as native to Ontario will have that link, which will give you the opportunity to search on the Internet for habitat information on that plant.