 Yes. Good evening everyone. Thank you for bearing with us with that. We have a lot more people actually with that in mind I'll step over here. We have a lot more people watching us via zoom than we do in person here so we're experimenting with this hybrid approach to try to please everyone and walking kind of a fine line. A bit of a tight rope trying to pull it off but hopefully so far so good. We're delighted to have Sean with us for a program tonight we'll get to that in a minute. First just a couple of quick announcements. The program next month will be on May 16 I believe it is the second third Tuesday of the month, featuring a remarkable young manor. Her name is doing a program on the, see I got a little discombobulated by all this tech setup, and our tech person is in the Arctic tonight so she was no help at all. But I will come back to you with that information program next month is on the forests of Maine, and enabling them to help preserve birds, and it's going to be a great program complete information is available on our website and Facebook page. And also later this month we have a workshop coming up with that I think there's still a few spots available for. It's the birding by ear workshop with Dan Godoki is Dan is it on the 29th. I believe Saturday the 29th of April. There may still be a few spots available if you're interested. Again, full information on our website. Onto tonight's program. Sean Jalbert from native haunts in our neighboring town of Alfred is someone who is absolutely passionate about native plants and ensuring their employment in our environment. He's not only passionate about it, but he's also extremely knowledgeable, which is an excellent combination. And we're so delighted to have him here with us tonight to talk to us about native plants and how it can heal and improve our landscapes. So, yes. So, Sean, where this video thank you is the name of the remarkable young woman who will be our presenter next month. So no problem whatsoever. So Sean, let me turn it over to you Thanks for your patience. Always, but you'll need to. So you'll need to stand over here to have yourself be visible. So thank you for the kind words and the introduction Bill. So tonight we're going to be kind of going over a good dose of Doug Callumnyism, which I'm sure most of us are familiar with and his works have been very influential in my continued development and speaking of native plants and figuring out how to integrate them into the landscape and how to make them work. And in terms of enriching our landscapes and oftentimes we may not realize it but our landscapes are almost sickly and kind of ailing. So that's the theme of tonight's presentation is using native plants for kind of ailing landscapes and native plant medicine. So just so you don't have to write like mad folks in here I put all of my presentations in PDF format on my website within the day or so and that way you can reference it and it doesn't have all the kind of the slick movements that the typical presentation does but at least there's enough information there. So if you want to look at one of the pictures again or review some of the information that's on the slides you can do that at your leisure and your living room and a little bit more at ease. So Bill went over more or less what I do at Native Haunts and essentially on many things I wear a lot of different hats and I can't really be pigeonholed into it one particular category but ultimately at the end of the day I'm a native plant advocate. And I do that in a number of different ways by coming to places like this and talking with folks I can bend their ear for an hour or so all about native plants and I also sell native plants themselves and trees and shrubs and organically grown perennials and consulting services and it's kind of rare to have just a singularly devoted native plant nursery especially in this area. So I'm glad to be able to offer those services to folks. I started probably about 20 or 22 years ago and I often tell the story of when I first started it was very discouraging because I literally couldn't give native plants away and at one point after growing this nice crop of them I really did just try to simply give them away and there are no takers even at that point. So that was kind of a hard way to start but more or less I hung in there and as the years went on and within the last five or 10 years and so things have really picked up and especially within the last three years I guess it's, if you can go so far as to say one of the gifts from the pandemic was increased awareness of native plants and getting outside and other things that we can be doing with our time and instead of rushing around going all over the place so it was kind of a happy time and amongst a lot of challenges. So that worked out quite well for me. So trying not to be too pessimistic because I like to infuse a fair amount of optimism and presentations here. So we're going to figure out what we can do with our landscapes and not to be too having too much enforcement here but we really do need to do better with our landscapes and we'll have several examples of here of do this, don't do that sort of thing. So rather strong language here, unacceptable but really it is when you go to take a look at it. We have the classic American lawn here with artfully decorated and bordered with hostess. I really had to give the guy credit and to give him even more credit this particular customer eventually went on and really made an aggressive effort to install native plants in his yard kind of disassembling this rather meticulous work that he did with the border work with the ecologically inert hostess and the lawn that's just really kind of taking up space and not doing a heck of a lot. So we all know how resource intensive lawns are. The obvious things like the amount of water they take I think I read somewhere today that they take something like one to two inches of water per week or maybe even more during the growing season. So especially in some of the more parched areas now that we're seeing and rainfall seems to be unpredictable we never really know what we're gonna get there. So we're pouring all kinds of water on these lawns and really for what it's not like these are much of an ecological value. I think they're more of a almost like a safety blanket of sorts. So we got to go to the opposite extreme here and this is a really splendid example of what I often jokingly say is what you can do by doing nothing. And by that, I mean this particular area here was on the edge of an athletic field in Kittery. And it was, I can only assume it must have been done intentionally because there was just a splendid growth of native plants. And as you can see here, I'll step aside for just a moment and see in the background that nefarious plant purple loosestrike is growing in amongst those beautiful growth of natives. We have some Joe Pye Reed and of course the seemingly ever present Goldenrods and I was supposed to be watching like some playing soccer, but of course I was looking at the plants like I always do as I tried to split the time evenly between both. But it was really remarkable the amount of pollinator activity in this particular kind of set aside area. And yes, even on the purple loosestrike. So even though they're highly invasive and they're kind of almost disassembling ecosystems with their invasions, they do at least provide some services in the form of being what seemed to be a pretty attractive pollinator plant. So one of my favorite places to go is the Mount Cuba center down in Delaware and it's right on the Pennsylvania border. Of course, Delaware isn't too big anyway. It seems like you could run across the state but really splendid kind of the typical manor garden that we see down in that greater Philadelphia area known as America's gardening paradise essentially. But in the last few years that I visited, I visited probably about like 10 or 15 years ago and then just again, last summer and they've made just tremendous strides at showcasing techniques on basically how to use native plants in your landscape. And again, kind of what to do, do this, don't do that sort of thing. And what I really like about this picture and it was just kind of an afterthought was a horribly steamy sultry day down there. And my son was kind of crying and whining and the other one really didn't want to be there either. So I was just kind of walking out of the garden and I just took this quick picture. And as I was looking back I realized how critical this picture was because it basically shows the kind of like the complete inversion of how we typically see our landscape. So we had these lushly planted multi-layered plantings on either side of this grass walkway. When you kind of think about it, if we went back several pictures, it's kind of the inverse of what that first picture was with the lawn and the hostess. So this is what the trend is now is going towards trying to minimize lawn square footage. And we can have our cake and eat it too. If we're going to have our lawn, kind of use it kind of walking on it all over it by using it as a pathway. It makes a really good pathway and it keeps it down. It basically cuts down substantially on those resource intensive chemicals and other products and precious rain and such that we would normally have to use. So this kind of splendidly showcases that. Another picture at Mount Cuba, what I particularly like about this one, again, this picture was kind of taken unintentionally, but it was a happy, not really a mistake, but coincidence, if you will. This does an excellent job at showing the layering that we typically come across in the healthy landscape. Off to the left there, we have the tree portion, kind of a tree shrub layer. And then below that kind of a shrub layer. And then we get down into our perennials and our so-called forms. And that layer itself is particularly rich and highlights the use of ferns, which I don't think we talk about quite enough in our planted landscapes. And I've learned quite a bit about ferns in the last several years. I've done some presentations on those. And as plant folks and gardeners and biologists and such, we can't help but wonder to the ferns, it's like, what are you doing in the landscape? You look pretty. It makes for some nice habitat, perhaps. Usually we associate ferns with kind of shady, moist areas, but what's going on there with the ferns? So come to find out, there's a number of studies that have been done that show ferns lock up a disproportionate amount of key nutrients into their tissues. I think the one study that I read about was looking at phosphorus. And it's something like 30 to 40% of the particular, I think this was in the Harvard forest, usually acts as kind of like the outside laboratory. They found that this phosphorus lock up in ferns. So by doing this, ferns were kind of able to almost control the successional dynamics of the forest in a way. So I found that tremendously interesting. There's several other papers too that point that out and mostly for tropical areas or ferns are most common, but also in the temporary areas that we live in too. So don't forget your ferns when you're planting your landscape. And also we have some sedges kind of on the bottom side there as well. I always feel like sedges kind of in this area too, a kind of a forgotten landscape plant. And if you've ever had any time looking at sedges, they're the so-called inflorescence or the flowering stock as it is, comes in just a mind boggling array of geometric designs. You can practically have an artwork published just on those kind of inflorescences. They're so special. So again, something that we could certainly integrate into our landscapes as well. And something that's kind of lacking in the horticultural trade. There's a few sedges that are available, but there definitely could be more. So never have enough native plants, right? So it makes sense. Wildlife-friendly landscapes start with native plants. And of course, those of us who have read Doug Callamy, we understand this pretty well. And just Doug, I call him St. Callamy, I guess in my twisted little world, just because of the gift that he's given us on being able to make that correlation between the importance of native plants to native insects. And then of course, it sounds like a triad of sorts, those native insects have on our bird populations. And we know that it's something like 90% of our migratory birds and resident birds, for that matter, rely on that insect form or protein to raise their young and to sustain themselves so they could do their activities too. So really made that equation between the two so obvious. So I'm a sucker for the viburnums and some other groups of plants as we go into here. And what I really like about a lot of these groups of plants especially with the viburnums, we have five species that are readily accessible and viewable in landscapes. A lot of these here, like the arrowwood viburnum on the left with the large blue berries, we find that a lot on like a power line right of ways where we have a kind of a nice variation. We have that openness, but yet we can have some moisture with some residual wetlands that might be there. Wonderful bird plant in terms of both the insects that it feeds with the leaves and also with the berries, I collect seeds so I'm always running these experiments. I don't really intend to run, but I see, okay. I know when it flowers, so usually anywhere from four to five weeks later I should start checking for seed. And with a lot of these species you have to check for seed early because it's certainly first come first serve. And it's almost like a kind of a pillaging sort of situation because as soon as those fruits are ripe they're gone within days. And maybe at the end of the week you might be able to find a few scraps that you could try to propagate. But so that's a really interesting with the arrowwood viburnum. And then another favorite that's often found in a similar habitat is wild raisin. That's kind of an all-American plan if you will. It's really spectacular the way the berries go through a three-part maturing process. So when they start out they're kind of whitish with a pink blush. And this is kind of like part ways through the second stage where they turn kind of full pink and sometimes reddish. And then by the time all of a sudden done they really do look like a raisin that's sticking on the branches. And they're kind of a nice dark purpley blue color. And again, the birds just love them. So my bird is just a spectacular species or group of plants in general. And then the kind of lesser known perhaps maple leaf viburnum in the upper right corner there. So that's more of a forced dweller. And sometimes it will sneak out a little bit towards the edge on some of these right-of-ways but typically we find it associated with denser shade and upland acidic soil. So, and we have several other species here that I didn't list including hobo bush which I purposely left out due to the fact that it's really hard to grow and propagate and make happy. So whenever I'm doing my presentations and I don't want to do what folks did 20 years ago I say, these are all these wonderful native plants that you could put in your garden but good luck trying to find them. So I like to try to highlight the plants that I talked about. You can actually buy from folks such as myself or from other nurseries and garden in the woods down in Framingham, Massachusetts. It's a wonderful place to go in the Somme farm out in Western Massachusetts. There's more and more of us popping up now that are growing native plants. So they're getting a little bit easier to find on some of these. So the next group of shrubs that I really love are the dogwoods. And again, we have, I think there's five, at least five species of dogwoods that are again fairly easy to find in the trade and are just wonderful wildlife plants. I'm a little biased towards shrubs when I'm talking about native plants just because I, and this is probably a gross generalization, but for the most part, shrubs seem to provide a little bit more than perhaps perennials do in terms of benefits to wildlife. So a couple of those I've already alluded to. So of course the leaves are feeding, hopefully some of our native insects in the larval form and which in turn are gonna feed up through the food chain, perhaps to birds and maybe mammals as well. But then the flowers come out, typically in late spring, maybe early summer. So again, attracting tons of pollinators that are coming in, we're feeding them in a whole different class of group of organisms. And then again, in the fall or late summer when the fruit comes out, we're literally feeding probably droves of birds and small mammals and other critters that are coming to feast on the bounty. So the other thing that I like about them, the dogwood group is the fact that in my mind, and I think with terms of using in the landscape, we can kind of divide them up into certain groups. So like the gray dogwood that we have here, silky dogwood, and then the red-osier dogwood, those are clump-forming species that we typically find associated with wetlands. So you play at what maybe just a stick to begin with and in a few years' time, they have kind of these graceful arching branches that form a lot of structure, which is the other thing that's wonderful about shrubs is that they're structured to their presence in the landscape. So birds love to eat and hide. And they always like to have these hidey holes. So these species are wonderful because they form kind of like these nice almost rounded dense thickets that provides a lot of wildlife. So we have the kind of a group of thicket-forming, usually wetland-associated species. And what's so wonderful about our native plants is most of these wetland species are pretty adaptable to growing in upland situations. So just because they may be considered obligate wetland plants in the wild, doesn't necessarily rule them out for growing in our more upland gardens. So that's a wonderful option there. And something to keep in mind when we're working with native plants is that there are some that are rather inflexible, not terribly adaptable, but then there's others that will kind of, it's like a happy dog, but they just want to please. Things like whenever you put them in, they'll do well. And then on the lower corner here, we have a round-leaved dogwood, which isn't terribly common in the trade, but it should be. That's an example of a thicket-forming upland species that we typically find in, and usually really dry soils, often growing beside road areas, usually in the full shade. So again, something that you're trying to get more into the horticultural trade. And it's there, sometimes you just have to dig. And as you can probably notice a theme on most of these dogwoods here, they have these really beautifully contrasting stems that the fruits attach to on many of them, especially with round-leaved dogwood and pagoda dogwood there. And even once the berries are gone, you have these striking, often like coral pink or purpley type stems that remain on there for quite a few weeks, not necessarily to the leaves fall off or pretty close to it. So one of my favorites and one of my childhood favorites before I even knew really what it was, was the pagoda dogwood, also known as the also at least dogwood and kind of a shorter lived ecotonal species. I know where I grew up, I always found it kind of growing a little bit in the field, a little bit in the woods, but never completely in the woods and never completely in the field. So now I kind of watch those come and go over the years and it seems like they'll get multi-stemmed and maybe up to 10, 15, 20 years old and then they usually contract some sort of fungal disease if it's the form of the anthracnose and it kind of beats them back down. So kind of an early successional, I'd say, plant. So and then we'll go kind of into another grouping. So even though this is a lot of themes going on here, we have the dogwood theme, which are in the genus cornus or most recently, sweda, they've been proposed to be changed over too. And then now we're kind of going into the rosaceous family theme where a lot of these plant families, like especially here with Chote Terry, now that's in the rose family. And when we see it in flowers, it's pretty obvious that it's kind of rose-like flowers that come down in these pendulous inflorescences and we can kind of see that a little bit the way the fruit structure is set up there. So again, one of these plants that now you see them, now you don't when the fruit comes out, it goes really quickly, which tells me that it's an important food source. And of course, you want them to disappear because that means they're being dispersed and the birds will fly away into a roosting spot and before long they poop them out and we're starting a new colony of Chote cherries to start a whole new area going. Oftentimes I find this associated with like these hedgerows. They appear to be an ideal hedgerow type plant to get going. And they kind of a taller shrub with multiple stems coming up. So not quite a tree, definitely a shrub, but sometimes almost a tree. So that's one of those species there. So loamy soils, part shade, take a little bit of sun, but kind of hard to find in the trade. I've been working on getting this more, kind of a more of a relative plan, more in the conversation. And I've only had mediocre luck with that. Fire cherry. I kind of didn't really pay too much attention to this one for years, but I would dare say that it's probably the prettiest in terms of the sheer volume of flowers that it produces. And as the name implies, it's an early successional species, find it growing in kind of beat-up areas, if you will, parking lot turnarounds and dry road sides and such, but it has these really spectacular, you know, when we think of cherries, I mean, that we kind of think of those red cherries. I mean, they're quite small. They're maybe about 10 millimeters in diameter. And again, those fly off the stem in short order. And I try to put a lot of emphasis on these different stages where we find these plants in the landscape. So you'll probably often hear me speaking of early successional. So, you know, whenever a landscape is disturbed, rather than the natural world has a tendency to certain groups of plants that will come in that it evolved to colonize quickly and rapidly take over an area in a good way, not in an invasive way, as we're so used to now on battling. And oftentimes they're making the area better than what they left it. So plants like sweet fur and have nitrogen-fixing nodules in the root. So they're actually adding nitrogen and helping that soil heal. So in fire cherry is an area that we typically would define that in as well. Beach palm is one of my favorites. Actually considered to be a rare plant in the state of Maine. The state of Maine has the so-called RTE list, which is rare threatened endangered species list. And that's based on the number of natural occurrences of a particular plant in question. So beach plum ranges from Nova Scotia, I believe, all the way down to the, certainly to Carolinas, if not beyond, but there's some stands of it here in Wells and in other places. But I'm not sure if it's one of these plants that was always a little on the rare side. And now with rampant coastal development, that kind of put it over the edge. But I was speaking with my son the other day, we were talking about how a lot of plants were, even though we can't find them in the wild at all, in some cases, or at least in something like a beach plum, they're harder and harder to find, but they're very secure in cultivation. So I guess we'd rather see whether it be a plant or an animal on its native habitat, but if that native habitat is no longer there, then we have to go with plant B. So very adaptable plant, despite the fact that you'll be associated with sand dunes and growing along coastal areas, usually in really bad soil, sandy, salty soil, so-called hell strips, if you will, where these just other plants are kind of struggling, but this does very well in upland areas too. So garden, lonely soils, and makes a great landscape plant and attracts really just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pollinators, mostly the hymenopteran type pollinators. So like the winged ants and wasps and flies and such, and like go out on a sunny day and they just close your eyes and listen and it's just buzzing with such activity. So a wonderful landscape plant for pollinators and oftentimes we don't usually think of shrubs when we're talking about pollinating, setting up plants for pollinators and such, but they definitely need to be part of the conversation. Of course, we have those delicious but tart beach forms that can be made into all kinds of so-called value added goods like jellies and such. Another plant that I often talk about is choked berry, not to be confused with choked cherry. Again, both from the same family here, that's our theme, but different genus, in this case, eronia. And this is probably one of our most adaptable landscape plants. It can grow in wetlands. It can grow in sandy uplands, like on the Kennybunk Plains, you can find it growing on mountaintops. I mean, you can literally almost find it growing anywhere. So we can use this kind of to our advantage in planting in the landscape and use it for a number of different applications. And because of its versatility, there's been a number of varieties with this that have been developed. But as we often see with varieties and native plants, this is a good example of kind of taking one thing and losing another. So in this case, where we have some of these lower growing cultivars, we noticed that the flowers look a lot different to the point where usually eronia has these really beautiful white flowers. And with some of these cultivars, we noticed the flower petals are greatly reduced and misshapen almost, but we see with these plant genetics that we can't have it all. You know, we can't have a compact habit, if you will, and still have normal looking flowers. So one has to ask these flowers, they look different. Do they perform different ecologically? So that's something that we need to ask ourselves when we're looking at a varietal native plant. So there's a lot of debate about it and believe it or not, there's actually been not to confuse the subject, but some varieties of native plants that are shown to be more attractive to pollinators than the non-varietal type. So that just throws a complete wrench into the worst. It's just basically the underscore is the fact of how flexible and adaptive nature is and don't judge a book by its cover sort of thing. But typically I usually stay away from varieties just because there's a lot of unknowns about them. And oftentimes there's a poor ecological fit. So as the theme was when we first started, we need to start doing better in our landscapes. And that means kind of embracing this idea of these so-called wild type native plants. So maple leaf fiber, in which we talked about a little bit and on the onset and what I've always found interesting about this plant and we see this in quite a few plants as well is that the berries will come out or the fruit rather comes out at the fairly normal time say in the fall sometimes, then they just stay on the plant and stay and stay and stay. And then they'll just disappear and come maybe February or it's even March. I'll kind of shriveled up. It's like, okay, so what's going on here? Is it nobody is here to eat them? Is it because they're not palatable? Or, you know, so I read that there's a lot of fruits that almost have to mature for a while for a TNNs, a certain other distasteful chemicals in the fruit to break down. And evidently the animals know because one day it's there, the next day it's cleaned out. So it's kind of interesting. We have several other species that we'll talk about that have kind of similar properties to that that I've always found interesting and something that I think could definitely use some more research just to find out what exactly is going on there. So it's a little spoonful of talamiism here with the Keystone species concept. So and it makes complete sense based on a lot of Doug's work that he's done, showing that even though, you know, we want a diversified ecosystem and we want to diversify garden as well, but we're seeing now that there's just some plants that are more influential than others and I guess in all parts of our life and whether it's people or foods or whatever, there's always something that takes a little greater priority. So oak in particular is considered to be one of these Keystone species just because it supports so many insect larvae, hundreds and hundreds of different species. And of course, oak has spread out over such a large area. There isn't this complete range of insects that fall out around each area has kind of its own a host or diversity and community of insects that it supports, but, you know, sort of certainly not if it's 140 down in Delaware, it may not be that many, maybe more around here. We never know. We certainly have to take that into consideration. The oak that I purposely chose here was bare oak or also called scrub oak and grows in these kind of glacial outwash planes usually as an understory shrub as a shrub, which is kind of a cool thing. You think of oak trees, you think of big trees, you don't think of oak shrubs. And, you know, this particular species here has always caught my eye and it seems to have more frequent nastiers than some of our tree growing species do. So that's kind of an interesting part there. So that's why I chose this one in particular to illustrate that Keystone species concept. I mentioned before, I'm always promoting the fact that shrubs are great pollinator plants. You know, when we say pollinator garden, what do we usually think of? We usually think of perennials. You know, we think of the maybe tone flower or mountain mint and things like that. But I like to promote the fact that, you know, through observation that shrubs are awesome pollinators too and are pollinator plants rather. So, you know, we definitely need to include them more in our landscape planning. We see, I'm not very good at insect identification, but it looks like a flower fly that's attracted there. It's really interesting too, because the different flower types will attract different groups and different types of pollinators and something that we need to pay attention to and we need to kind of integrate in our landscapes and plan for as we'll see later on in the presentation. Eastern tiger, a tiger swallowtail butterfly feeding on button bush. So, a button bush is one of those great plants, typically a wetland plant, but very adaptable to upland areas as well. Of course, the spectacular beauty of the butterflies kind of obscuring the beauty of the flower from the button bush, which is seemingly a nearly perfect sphere and it has these statements kind of sticking up, which looks like a sort of a split neck looking sphere there, but a wonderful plant and very adaptable and a great plant for those big showy butterflies. It has a really sweet perfume-y narcissists like smell to it as well. So, you know, if you happen to go along a pond edge or a vernal pool or a wetland or somewhere where it's in a flower, you'll smell it probably before you see it. So, it's another positive attribute to have in the landscape. This is part of my pollinator garden right in the front of my yard and I try to practice what I preach. So, I had a thin section of lawn there that I tore up and a lot of these volunteered, especially with the golden rods, but a lot of the other species like the New England aster I had to introduce. So, and as you can see, there's a kind of a mixture there of native and non-native species. The New England aster's there on the one corner and then the golden rods in the middle and then kind of on the lower corner there, you'll notice some flocks, which is something that my wife demands we have in our garden because it has a kind of a multi-generational significance to it from her grandmother. And again, Doug Tallon often says, you know, you don't have to go rip out every single non-native plant in your yard. You want to plant as much native as possible, but 70% native, 30% non-native, do no harm sort of plant. So, it's not acceptable for something like barbarian or maple, which we all I'm sure I know about. So, you know, it's okay to have a little bit of both. We just have to be wary of who we invite in, I guess, if you will. So, and purple cornflower echinacea, it is a native, but not a native to here. It's a native to the Midwestern United States. So, you know, that brings up some interesting conversations. Like, okay, where do we draw the line on the so-called activity? You know, do we have strictly plants that are in the main area in New England, the eco region, the United States, East of the Mississippi River, where do we draw these lines? So, I choose to include echinacea in my garden just because it's a beautiful plant and it's a magnet for butterflies and I can't resist. So, you know, we have like an example here of these friddle areas. It's not uncommon to have multiple friddle areas at once fighting over landing space, which is awesome to see. And then, you know, we have monarchs coming in and visiting and those kind of diminutive skippers that come in a several different species of those. So, it rarely feeds an awful lot of wildlife. So, big bang for the buck in terms of that plant there. New England aster is hard to beat in terms of its adaptability and the kind of the riot of colors that it produces everything from a great purple to a magenta to getting kind of like a coral red and really kind of versatile genetics here. So, never really know what you're gonna get. And the Painted Lady butterflies really love it and American ladies as well, butterflies which are quite closely related and both are migratory butterflies. And of course, we don't know about the migrations that monarchs do, but probably not so on other species of butterflies that migrate, which is something that I learned a few years ago. I'm always researching and fact-checking and double-checking what I present to make sure I'm telling you accurate information and such and their migratory butterflies as well and they'll come in in the fall and they might be there for a couple of days and there's a gaggle of them usually two or three and then just poof, they're just gone. And they too are migrating like the monarchs are. So, and of course, we don't have very many bird pollinators in this area, much more common trait in tropical areas but around here, of course, we have our ruby-throated hummingbirds and they really like those deep corolla tubes on species like cardinal flower here. It's a very common experience to be going out and gardening all of a sudden here and you look around and you have this hummingbird seemingly in hypersonic flight patterns buzzing around you and fighting. Who would have thought such a small bird would be so aggressive but they like to compete for resources and perhaps you need to when you're that small. So, as we spoken, native plants equal native insects and we know this because of these close associations that we see with our native insects and there's a number of examples that we've probably been most taught about even as children, particularly with monarch butterflies and in the larval stage needing the milk we plant to be able to sustain that next generation there's hundreds and hundreds, dare I say, thousands of other of these associations that native insects have kind of co-evolved as a community with our native plants and overcoming various chemical defenses that the plants have and being able to feed on them and reproduce which is the ultimate goal. So, it wasn't so long ago that I often reflect upon that the first thing that we did when we put plants in was to make sure they were bug free. We wanted the bugs to stay off of them, bugs were our enemies and now we need to completely flip that generational idea over on its head. We need to feed the bugs. We're planting for invertebrate conservation essentially as like the Xerces society would promote and which I do in many of my lectures as well. So, and this is essentially bird food because some saw fly larvae munching away on pitch pine. And if you ever get the chance to see saw fly we have a number of different species and saw flies around here. They're kind of cool like there's one RA that's kind of showing the defense posture. You can just like wave your hand across the feeding group and they'll all kind of curl up and rear up on their backs. You take your hand away, they all come down and they kind of do it in unison too. And apparently it's a defensive mechanism to make themselves perhaps a bigger. Again, these guys don't last too long when you find them. So, I suspect that they're pretty good on the bird food menu. Another species of saw fly this time on Pagoda dogwood. I don't care if they eat my plants, that's where I have the plants there for. So, as probably deep down in our psyche as soon as we see bugs eating plants perhaps from millions of years ago or thousands of years ago as we were domesticating plants that was the last thing we'd wanna see are bugs devastating our food sources. So, we need to kind of like force that back and it's okay for bugs to eat our plants now. We want them to because in this state they're bird food and then they'll metamorphosize and turn into flies which will in turn allow for some more types of bird food for perhaps different species. The awesome spice bush swallowtail larvae. So, this was taken in South Burley. So, it's local and now for a long time, spice bush swallowtail butterflies were kind of rare where they always hear we just didn't look for them or probably a combination of all these things that now there's a lot of naturalists out there and we're kind of watching out for these things and spectacular case of mimicry here. So, to look at this thing is like, what the hell is this? Is it some sort of a snake? Is it some sort of escape reptile that's out here? No, we start looking at it and of course it's very much a caterpillar but it has those devilish looking eyes that make it look so much bigger than what it does kind of like the spot perhaps on a killer whale and that's all basically to help ensure its survival. And this is a specialist feeder is staged on spice bush and sassafras both of which are kind of rare in this area which would explain the rarity of the butterfly. So, we have a kind of a cause and effect there. So, the next section we'll go into is going over planting and planning for pollinators which as we find is usually a couple of different things. There's a variety of different ideas we can look at here when we're planning for pollinators we all know that we need to have a variety of bloom times and we need to be feeding them. And at this point, very early spring, spring, summer and into the fall until really it starts to get cold enough to prohibit insect flight. And of course now with our climate change events that we're witnessing every year a lot of these insects need food in November which maybe they maybe didn't years back. So, we need to plan for that. We need to figure in the diversity of flower shades because pollinators have different cullings. Makes sense, I guess they have different body forms. So, just having a few species of flowers in our gardens will only invite in a few species of pollinators because of the particular anatomy of these pollinators. So, variety of plants including trees, shrubs and grasses trees play a really big role in supporting our pollinators. Plant and tender variety of habitats. If we have a shady moist area or our landscape that's awesome, plant it, put in appropriate plants for that area and take advantage of it. So, this kind of exciting concept of larval host plants which I've been kind of promoting throughout the season here and that's something I've been learning about. And again, something that we kind of know from the monarch butterfly but it extends out dramatically from there. So, organically grown plants started from seed are very important. We've all heard about the problems of systemic insecticides being used on plants and the last thing we want to do is be killing the very organisms we're trying to promote which can happen. So, there's a lot of locally grown native plants now and they're a little hard to find but if you dig, it's well worth the effort. And a lot of these great programs that have been initiated lately like No Mo May, Leave the Leaves and such. So, we'll talk a little bit about how we can try to practically implement those into our landscape. So, I couldn't help this. I kind of went along a few weeks ago. We had a pilliated woodpecker. There's this particularly utility pole by my house and it's old and it's hollow. So, woodpeckers of the several different species that we have in the area, they love to just come in and wrap out their tune on it and it's always interesting. And I'd never seen a pilliated up until a few weeks ago so I couldn't help myself. But as we know that dead trees and dead wood provides habitat and life for a lot of things despite the fact that the plant itself is dead. And we know that a lot of species of solitary bees need those soft materials to burrow in and overwinter in and make nested in and such. So, it's okay to have what we might consider a messy landscape because that messiness is providing opportunity for a lot of other organisms that we need to think about and try to care for. And doing research for this presentation and learn that 70% of native bees are ground nesting. So, really important to have bare ground. And we often say nature are pores of vacuum and humans are poor bare ground. And for good reason in some cases with erosion and such but it's a very important habitat for our native bee population and most of which are solitary nesters. And when we think of bees, what do we think of honeybees, right? And they form colonies and our native bees just not like that. They probably come together to native of course but other than that, they just want to be left alone. It's such a bad thing, right? And then of course, the whole leave the leaves campaign I'm sure a lot of us have seen and talked about and hopefully implemented in our yards. And I kind of discovered this at a young age. When most kids were out riding their bikes and playing soccer or whatever, I was making a rock garden. So, every year I get out there this time and you pull off all the leaves and kind of noticed when I was doing it that that nice layer of organic matter is now gone and the moisture retention isn't what it should be. And it didn't occur to me until quite some time later. I said, leave the leaves, it makes so much sense. But again, it's just kind of the classical gardening wisdom, right? You remove the temperature, you take the leaves off and when in fact we now know that leaves have so many positive properties to them where we're recycling the nutrients that the tree has converted, putting that back into the soil providing habitat for hundreds of different species of insects and even things like salamanders and wood frogs, for instance, that need to overwinter in those upland areas away from their vernal pools. And of course we've got woolly-boolly there that we all know and love in the fall and they need to have those areas to overwinter in. And of course, most of us have maybe found them as we're digging through the soil early in the spring. So very important to leave those leaves. I came across this, I was taking pictures last year and I said, wow, I never even thought of ants being pollinators. So that's why I kind of assumed and I watched them for a while. This is on a Bebs Willow and it seemed like it was going to each flower very dutifully collecting something. And so I did some research on it before the presentation and I learned that for the most part ants are typically referred to as pollen robbers. They're going in there, they're scoring a meal, they're hungry, they need to bring it back to the colony, they need to feed themselves. So come to find out ant anatomy is not very conducive to pollinating. Of course we know with insects, they're not going from flower to flower to pollinate. They're going to flower to flower to get nectar and pollen and feed themselves. And in the process they're pollinating just because of these settee or densely hairy bodies which trap the pollen and then as they're scurrying through other flowers they're pollinating and making the match there. So ants have evidently antibiotic type chemicals that are on their skin that help them live in their colonies where there's usually a high moisture content. And of course many species of ants are fungal farmers. So I didn't realize they had any biotics drenched on their body. So that in turn evidently has a negative effect on pollen. So even if there is some pollen stuck to their body chances are it's not going to be alive enough so when they go to their nexos a pollination won't occur. And of course ants aren't very hairy. So fun things that we learn. So the importance of larval host plants. Again, we know the whole part about the Mara butterfly but most every species of butterfly and moth has a larval host plant. And some of those cases they're very specific and other cases they're generalists. So I chose to use this case with a fritillary just because it visits me quite often. And come to find out the even though the adults we find attracted to like Akinacea and other asteraceous plants they need violets in order to complete their life cycle. So when the time is right they'll come in and they'll either lay their eggs on the violets or close by. And then as the larvae hatch out they find their way to the violets. They'll eat and get to the point where they can metamorphosize to their next form sometimes multiple instars or stages. And then other times they're jumping right basically the creepy worm form for the moth or butterfly that we're so familiar with. So when we're seeing these butterflies flying through our neighborhoods is a reason why they're there. And conversely, there's a reason why they may not be there. So they're adult feeding plants are there. That's one thing. But if there are larval host plants are there it makes complete sense they wouldn't be there either. So again, going back to that awesome Spice with Swallowtail Caterpillar and we often find it growing on Spicebush. And Spicebush in itself is a really important wildlife plant. Those, I don't know if anybody's ever tried to like say propagate Spicebush from seeds. You'll notice that the seeds are really very obviously fatty and slippery and kind of hard to work with. So come to find out they're rich in lipids which of course is sustained energy in the fall for bird migration. So again, we kind of see like this full circle of important features there. You can see on the lower corner there in flower that was in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago. Of course there are a few weeks ahead of us but this is a cool thing. So there's a couple species of carnivorous butterfly larvae. So the harvester butterfly which I fact check and indeed its range extends up into Maine. The larvae feed on woolly aphids. Apparently woolly aphids that grow on alders. So that's another example of again the importance whether we even are doing it intentionally or know it or not of having diverse species assemblages either in our gardens or promoting them nearby. Cause you would have ever thought that you would have carnivorous butterfly larvae. It almost sounds like maybe something I have a horror movie of sorts, you know? But it's true and it's kind of a great example of the importance of diversity and how we need to embrace it and have that in our landscapes. I love stag horn sumac. Most people fight stag horn sumac like it's a world war three because again it's very adventurous. You know, we find it growing again in some of these disturbed areas where maybe many other things aren't growing and you know, it's like the gopher game where you know, it pops up in one spot, we may take that out, it pops up in another and that's what it does. It's a colonizing plant and it thrives in these disturbed areas. So we should be grateful that it's kind of a healing plant in terms of trying to make do with a landscape that's been damaged and another thing that we can be grateful for is the flowers there in the middle frame where not a terribly pretty floral display. You know, there's male and female plants and around mid-summer. So we have these kind of pale green, yellowish flowers that come out but densely flowered. And again, they attract a lot of pollinators. Usually it seems like again, those kind of winged ants or wasps and such. And it's also the larval host plant for the spring as our butterfly. Spring as our butterfly does come into this range but it's nothing that we would come across even if we were actively seeking it out. So I think we're on the edge of that range but again, I just used it as an illustration. So I couldn't help myself. I had to show it again in a different picture. You know, the fact that the importance to birds on this one too is something I like to emphasize because the fruit stays on, if you've noticed like well and the leaves are off, you know, we got the first snowfall. They're still on, we're into, you know, December, January, February, March and what the heck is there around it in February, March to eat for a bird? Well, this is available. And usually again, it's just everything happens suddenly in nature. It seems like a lot of times, you know, one day they're nice and loaded up with this fruit and then the next day it's like a skirmish occur and pieces are on the ground and the branches are bare. So again, another important late winter food source is the birds. Same thing with winter berry to a certain extent where the berries will not stay on as long as they do with something like sumac but they'll usually stay on while into the winter months. And of course that's one of the reasons why we like it as a landscape plant because it does have a kind of that multi-season interest and you know, it might be kind of a bland dull drab landscape. We have these nice bright red berries. So I'm gonna digress a little bit here because there's some fun stories about winter berries. So winter, we're talking about the potential problems with some of these varietal plants. This is a really interesting juxtaposition on this species. So there's several varieties that are recognized and are bred through the fact that they have these much bigger berries than what we typically find because the berries on a wild type plant sometimes may not be much bigger than maybe a BB or a bit bigger than that. So there's been some studies that have shown that in these large buried varieties the berries are too big for the target bird species to swallow. So again, we're kind of selfishly playing we're planting native, right? Yeah, but you know, we're come to find out some birds that are typically used to eating these can't use them as a food source. So the other part of this equation is as many species of hollies are you have male and female plants who wants to put a male plant in their landscape because it's not gonna have these pretty berries, right? So how do we get around this? And it's not 50, 50 in nature. Like if you planted a hundred seeds you're not gonna have 50 females or 50 males. It's much more skewed towards the males and we often see fewer females in comparison. So how do we deal with this in a landscape? We wanna have this plant in our landscape but we wanna have our cake and eat it too. So a lot of the varieties with this particular species have been separated out on male and female varieties. What do you do with that? You know, you want the berries but you don't want your varieties because the varieties aren't seed propagated. Of course, they're vegetatively propagated. Roll the dice, a lot of people don't wanna do that. They want to be pretty well assured of success of having red berries. So it's kind of an interesting issue. And there's a lot of species that are like that spice bush, for example, male and female plants you wanna plant it for the berries may or may not get any. You know, we get to kind of a, not quite a 50-50 rule of the dice, if you will. There's several other species to bayberries like that. You know, people are excited. Oh, I wanna start a bayberry recipe. I wanna try to make wax candles. Are these gonna be fueling a plant? I don't know, it would be nice to know. I would love to be able to tell you but you just don't know it. Nothing's been done with like bayberry in terms of separating the mountain varieties but I digress on purpose here just to illustrate some of the conundrums that we often face in native plant nursery trade and trying to do the right thing by non-varietal plants but it's complicated. Some plants are easier than others but it's complicated. So, and of course, pointing out with the whole larval host plant theme with Henry's elfin butterfly which in fact does exist around here. Looking at Sassafras, which is kind of at the northern end of its range here. We have some stands in the Sanford area. And again, it seems to be kind of a hedge row for favoring species. You find it kind of in ecotonal areas. A little bit more common when we get down into the Burlicks and Kittery and then when we get down into like the Durham, New Hampshire coastal area, it becomes even more common in the further south we go. So we're definitely at the northern tip of its range. Again, like we would expect it's part of the Spice Bush family. So it has those really lipid rich kind of fatty fruit that come out in the fall and great for migrating birds. And of course I had to throw in the larval picture again. It's just such a spectacular picture. This was actually taken not far from here just to maybe a thousand feet out in the woods. And it's Washington Hawthorne which should be more common in the nursery trade. We have about 25 species of it in Maine. As a genus, there are hundreds and hundreds of species of it. And kind of has these pretty white flowers that will be coming out in a few weeks and has this fruit that comes out. And sure as heck as we would expect so larval holds plant for something. In this case, the red spotted purple which is neither red spotted or purple but I digress there. So I'll just stick with the plants and be judgmental on the plants. We'll let the other folks worry about the butterflies. So and then I'm always trying to promote new ways of thinking and kind of diverging out new pathways. And I like to look at the grasses as well. Because grasses are included in our landscapes. Most of the time it's non-native sometimes invasive grasses. So we have little bluestem grass which I'm sure you could find within five feet from here. Very common in these areas. Loves upland areas with poor soils, low nutrient composition, fast draining soils. Doesn't take much for water when it gets going. And grasses are split up into warm season and cold season grasses. The name implies the cold season grasses gets going earlier in the season. The warm season grasses don't get going until usually like late June or July. So if I were to offer you a pot of this, it'd be basically just this brown grassy stem of nothing. But sure as heck if the plant is alive it will come to again in July. So there's this kind of interesting dichotomy between our native grasses that kind of fit both ends of the spectrum. So and you don't often think of this as having anything to do with pollinators because it's wind pollinated as most grass species are. Lo and behold, nine species of skipper butterflies use it as a larval host plant. And I was also reading as well that it makes important habitat for ground nesting bees because of all kind of the nooks and crannies and the hidey holes that are formed. And oftentimes when we see it growing in the wild it does have these kind of clump forming tendencies. It doesn't have rise in adidas growth like we often associate with plants. So again, we have the skipper butterfly on the Akinacea down there in the corner. And the reason why we have the skipper butterflies is because we have our little blue stems around. And of course that famous poster child of larval interactions, milkweed. So it's cool enough that it's the food source from our butterflies. If you take a few minutes and just kind of sit there and watch a nice grove of common milkweed that attracts an awesome variety of kind of freaky looking pollinators. We have this hummingbird moth that's coming in. And then off to the side there we have those, I believe they're milkweed beetles that appear to be mating or having some sort of a fight there. But there's species of beetles that will actually go through and instead of maybe figuring out a way to deal with the chemicals in the sap, what they do is they sever the veins of the leaves. And by doing that, that allows the sap to drain out. And then after that's drained out then they'll go in and feed on the leaves. So that's a really cool way. That's a splendid example of close co-evolution between completely different species, insects in the animal kingdom and of course milkweeds in the plant kingdom. And then we have turtle head, which is a pretty common plant in kind of wet mucky areas, often stream side or wetland side. And come to find out, of course, it's the larval host plant for the Baltimore checker spot. So, and I included this as well just to show the diversity of native plants and where they'll grow. But also it has kind of a funky looking floral shape to it too. And of course the namesake turtle head is its resemblance to a turtle. And it's taken even further where the genus in the scientific name is chelone. And chelonia is an order of turtles. So that's kind of cool. So the Latin names are doing their jobs and being descriptors of what it looks like or it's resemblance to other organisms. Then pokeweed, which is a kind of a common weed of disturbed areas. And again, it looks, it's almost shrub light, these so-called suppressant stems, which are kind of woody, but still definitely perennial. So it's kind of one of those in-between plants and kind of ancient looking flowers. In fact, the family and the order that this plant belongs to is considered to be a so-called primitive plant family. Primitive in the fact that it has traits associated with a lineage of plants that were way, way back. And so it's kind of unique in that way. It's kind of a little bit of a throwback of sorts. But when the berries come out in late summer and fall, the bluebirds and cat birds and a variety of other birds would come in and feast on these. And I've seen these caterpillars crawling around like mad in the fall and never really knew what they were. And they're very distinctive. They have these coarse hairs that come out but then kind of then the ribbing between the segments that are very bright red. So they stick out like a sore thumb and come to find out the larvae of the giant leopard moth, which in itself, it looks more like a Dalmatian to me, but we won't split hairs. So again, kind of a perfect example of a plant that our first inclination would be to get it out of there so we could put something else in. But it's a native plant, phytolaca americana. So it's right in a specific epithet. So again, a little bit of research goes long ways and get into interest in phytochemistry as well. I guess a barrier once in a while won't hurt you, but there are some poisonous parts of the plant. So it's interesting there as well. Everyone was so happy. I'd like to be more like it, almost more saleable that way. So I found out some great information about foam flower, which is very common in the horticultural trade usually as varieties, evidently a very plastic genome because as you well know, the leaves on this come in, seems like dozens, if not maybe hundreds of different shades and patterns, but try to find the wild type non-varietal foam flower. It's really, very ironic because you'd have a hard time finding this, but yet you can go to any garden center, whether it's Walmart or the local gardens that are down the street or another big box store, and you're gonna find it. It's just not the native type. So come to find out for such a kind of a modest plant, it supports an awful lot of butterflies, so morning cloaks, which are coming out now. I've seen two or three of them already. They're unique in the fact that they overwinter as adults, which is kind of rare when it comes to butterflies and moths, not uncommon, but a little on the rare side. And that's that one on the top there with the brilliant white margins on its wings. And then we get into the eastern commas and the question marks. I don't think there's any exclamation points, but. Yeah, those kind of interesting species there that, again, use foam flower as a larval host plant. In the wild, we find foam flower usually growing kind of wet mucky wetland soils, always in the shade, but as we know, it's very adaptable and more upland gardens, it does quite well. And then these silver spotted skippers that I found coming to my Akination, again, I didn't really give it too much thought, and then as I was doing research, it's like, okay, so we see the theme here, return to a broken record, it's gotta have a larval host plant. So it turns out that it's American ground nut, which is kind of an interesting plant. You can see that when the flowers, it has that resemblance to peas, so it's in the Fabaceae family. And as its name implies, the ground nuts are edible. We often hear stories of the early colonizers and occupiers, if you will, coming over and making use of that as a food source. So I could go on forever, but this is probably a good place to end it now. We hit our hour point. So questions or comments, I mean, certainly I have a question and answer session now. And if you're driving home or a couple of days later, you have some other questions, you can contact me in multiple ways, either by phone, email, or poke around on the website and there's more contact information there, so. First of all, great. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. So the vein of my life for many years has been Japanese beetles. And do they have anything good to recommend them? Are they food for anything? You know, I just drop them in water and kill them. I think from what I've observed and read in their larval form they are, because oftentimes there's this- Skunks will. Exactly. Yeah, skunks coming in. The skunks are digging up my lawn. You know, we're gonna treat the lawn for grubs, which will in turn, you know, and there are actually some biological treatments that you can use for Japanese. Yeah, a milky score, I believe it is. So I can't say that I've ever seen an adult Japanese bee it'll be eaten by anything. Yeah. Yeah. And actually- Spiders, crack-crackles, and frozen, if you're thinking about seeing them. Oh, okay. Oh, really? Oh, I'm glad you said that. Why are you looking for them here, too? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Exactly. Yeah. I was gonna put them in my bag. Yeah. Peanut, and the egg, and the sauce. Oh, nice. They go 24. Yeah. Maybe they could be an excellent protein source, like ants or other bugs. Who knows? But yeah. Any other questions or ideas or comments? Yep. So when you're planting made of plants and growing, you know, seedlings, when you put them out in your yard, do you put a lot of manure with them or compost, or do you, how does that work? So it depends on the species of plant that you're working with. So we'll off on a low tangent here. So if you have something like we just looked at with a little blue step, definitely not. You want to actually put it in some of the more poorer soil that you may have available on your property. It doesn't, it's been adapted to these nutrient poor environments for millennia. So it needs sandy, quick draining soils with low nutrient value, you know, with good drainage. So, but then if you get into something like some of these wetland perennials that we're talking about, something like maybe Joe Pieweed or Boneset, where, you know, they're used to growing in more moist conditions, having an added or organic matter content to these more maybe upland lonely soils will definitely benefit them. Because of course, with our organic matter, we have moisture retention. So that will kind of help compensate maybe for that loss of adequate moisture that it may have evolved in and more of a wetland condition. So it definitely matters on what plant you're talking about. It's not like our vegetable gardens, you know, we've all been trained, you want to enrich that soil and make it the best soil you can because, you know, with more fertility comes bigger yields and better flowers or fruit or vegetables or whatever we're trying to grow, but, you know, with native plants, it isn't always like that. There, you know, there's some that really enjoy that extra organic matter. And then there's some that it will literally kill. I've seen a couple of examples of well-intentioned native plants installed in a garden, but then laying down high-test compost, if you will, and drip irrigation. Why did this fail? Wrong plant, wrong place, you know, lay off the organic content of the soil. You know, yes, you need a little bit of extra water to get the plants established, but then after that, turn it off, those kind of things. So, yeah, it's kind of part of that whole right plant, right place situation. I know we can't research the daylights out of every plant that we see, or especially on the spot, but they're definitely picking. So. I want to be out of the audience still. Yeah. Which was great fun. Yeah. But it's really difficult. One of five, six, you should just get one plant tested and then next year get more. You know, it's a lot of decision-making. Yeah. And I even didn't succeed, you don't find it which, you know, you find growing up, besides the world, I put it in the garden and then it's not happening. Yeah. So, it seems more complicated. I love the idea, but it's see why people who just want to have a pretty flower garden just go for the traditional stuff. Yeah. There's, you know, I think a lot of native plants have an undeserved reputation as being difficult and elderberry is something that I've had difficulties with over the years. You know, you do your research on it, it needs, you know, like to have these kind of loamy organic soils with high moisture content and maybe some other shrubs and a little bit of shade, a little bit of sun and put it there and it just withers away to nothing. So, you know, some of it may have to do with like the plant stock itself, transplant shock sometimes, you're coming out of this cushy nursery environment and, you know, being tended to fairly regularly and then you're kind of going out on your own, you know, especially with these erratic rain events that we have during the summer, you know, like right now it's really dry and it could be dry for much of the summer or it could have deluges of rain. So, you know, maybe establishment that, you know, even though they're native plants and they're adapted to the area, perhaps much better than a lot of other plants, sometimes they need extra TLC. So it could have been, you know, a whole variety of things and sometimes it's just simply not the right plant for the right place. If we can catch it in time, we can maybe, you know, put it into a different area that you try it out if that doesn't work. But so it's kind of touch and go and a lot of the species that are available in the trade are easier to grow more adaptable species. You know, they're in the trade for a reason. You see that more so with like commercially available non-native plants. You know, they're easy to propagate there. They're easy to transfer. They do well in a variety of areas. So, yeah, just keep on trying and that, like, you know, all things are gardening. There will be some failures, but it's that, you know, like with salesmanship, you know, every lost sale, you're closer to making your sales. It's kind of the same with plants. Well, I don't know if you're buying what's the same way. Oh, good. I tend to think of them as being leads in the sense that they were all where I don't want them to be, but now I know there are both plants. Yeah. So I'm just doing it. Leave a few extra in there, but yeah, they do get a little rascally in the dark, I'm sure, so. Well, thank you very much, Sean. Very welcome. Thank you. Thank you.