Vermont Native Plants List

Native Plants are the Genius of Place

According to the VT Fish & Wildlife website, Vermont is home to over 2,800 plant species. Most of these are flowering plants, but this also includes conifers, ferns, grapeferns, clubmosses, horsetails, quillworts, spikemosses, and bryophytes—mosses, liverworts, and hornworts.

The following link is a List of VT Native Plants: A spreadsheet listing Vermont Native Plants and (some of ) the pollinators and other insects they each attract. 

View the Introduction (PDF text file) at Introduction text to the Vermont Native Plants and the pollinators and other insects they attract file. 

Other good sources to see where plants are native to are: Go Botany (Native Plant Trust) and BONAP - The Biota of N.A. Program. I find Go Botany easier to use. Click on the link, type in a plant name into the search bar. 

CAUTION: If you use BONAP, be sure you understand how their mapping works. I found what I thought was a discrepancy between BONAP and Go Botany. Which did not make sense, because GO Botany uses BONAP as its source. Turns out how one interrupts the BONAPS map is the key. 

See note below from BONAP rep. that explains further. 

Thank you for your interest in BONAP.  Your interpretation of the state-level map is correct.  Both Polemonium reptans and Hydrangea arborescens are adventive/introduced to Vermont.  Nativity is assigned at a state level, thus a species is exotic, native, or adventive to a particular state.  We define adventive as follows:

“an adventive plant is a native plant that has been taken from its native range and released intentionally or unintentionally, or been disseminated elsewhere within the geographic area treated, through the direct or indirect influence of human activity.”

BONAP defines native plants as species that occur naturally in a particular geographic area (North America, north of Mexico, including Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and Greenland) without direct or indirect human intervention.  

***Regarding the county-level maps, we only have TWO state-background colors, dark green (native) and dark blue (exotic). If a species is NATIVE TO THE North American continent, state-background color is dark green, lF EXOTIC, the state background color is dark blue. All other colors including; teal, yellow, pink, red, black, etc., pertaining to the nativity of the individual state and its counties.  Therefore, the state-background color of the map for Polemonium reptans and Hydrangea arborescens in Vermont is dark green, indicating native to NORTH AMERICA. BUT(!), the county occurrences of the species in Vermont is TEAL colored, indicating that in Vermont, these species are adventive. 

For comparison, take a look at BONAP's map of Ginkgo biloba. This species is EXOTIC to North America, indicated by the dark blue background color of the map. Notice the light blue colors of the individual counties, indicating presence only there within each state. I hope this helps.

Regards,

Misako

Data Manager

BONAP

9319 Bracken Lane

Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Here is essentially the same advisory from the rep. at Go Botany.

Dear Bernie,

Both BONAP and Go Botany treat this species as non-native in VT.  It is a bit confusing because BONAP has some limitations with how it can code (or display) various states.  Because Polemonium reptans is native to North America, it gets the dark green background of natives, even in states where it isn't non-native.  They can't code the different states with different background colors.  So, they make up for this with an introduced (or adventive) color for each county to note it is native to North America (but not necessarily VT) and is introduced to VT.  Hopefully, this clarifies.  If it doesn't, please feel free to contact me and we can continue this conversation.  Best wishes.

Good morning.  

Arthur Haines

Senior Research Botanist

167 Thorne Mountain Road

Canton, ME 04221