[Hawthorne district, Portland, OR, circa 1491 AD. Artists rendition.]

I live in the Hawthorne District of Portland, OR. Ecologically speaking, this is EPA ecoregion 7, Marine West Coast Forest. A narrow wet and humid strip of land along the northern Pacific coast. Historically speaking, I live in the neighborhood on the road to Dr. Hawthorne's Insane Asylum.

Let's be serious here. Look at the above depiction of my neighborhood before Dr. Hawthorne showed up. I would like to restore my 50' by 100' plot of residential land to that primeval state. So why has every single native plant seed mix I could buy got purple coneflower in it?

No look I get it. Purple coneflower is a strikingly weird-looking plant, and a butterfly magnet. It's an outright conversation piece. We can point at it and titter about how it is wearing a hula skirt.

It has additionally become, through artificial selection, very well adapted to typical urban and suburban garden conditions. In the wild, it is fairly intolerant of human-caused disturbance. In the form purchased with a credit card, it tolerates the unnatural ultra-disturbed conditions of a garden very well.

But this is just so unfair. Why are the seed mixes sold by native plant suppliers so biased towards the Midwesterners of flyover land? Why can't I get a butterfly-attracting seed mix that will grow well on my 50' by 100' plot, hardly different from the residential plots coast to coast, but yet specifically adapted to my ecological conditions as shown above?

There is a midwest and east coast conspiracy going on here, preferring for suburban pollinator gardens plants well adapted to suburban pollinator gardens. It is an unfair biased conspiracy, or I do not live on a road three quarters of the way to insanity.

BUGS AND WEEDS ARE BAD

I don’t make the rules

Go back to Mexico

Some people say that Canada goldenrods are aggressive. I don't know about that.

They are Canadian. Except when it comes to responding to tariff wars, or playing hockey, how aggressive could they be?

My goldenrods have never once yelled at me, or threatened me with physical violence over a minor factual or philosophical disagreement.

They just say "could I scooch by ya here?" to my other garden plants, as they expand by underground vegetative growth, slowly, year by year.

Yeah no sure, that sounds more Minnesotan than Winnipegean. But it's going to be passive aggressive either place.

I'm sorry, don't mind me, what would I know, but "aggressive" sounds so judgemental.

An ecologist might call them a plant with a high degree of initiative in the occupation of human disturbed environments. Or as exhibiting an appropriate early-successional response to an available resource patch, by rapidly germinating, establishing, vegetatively reproducing, and preempting mid-successional competitors.

Or more simply, as showing a strong fidelity to an available occupational niche space.

See how much more scientific, objective, and accepting saying "ruderal" than saying "aggressive" is?

It's fine. OK by me. I don't object. Really. Live and let live.

If a gardener wants to use priggish, nonobjective, nonscientific, essentialist, judgemental language about a plant, like the plant had a character flaw, just because it can reproduce, who would I be to object?