Over the last couple of days I've been trying to come up with a flashier way to depict if a plant species is native or non-native, it's general abundance around the world, and if it's invasive or not. Many of these are my own opinion since the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN; the ones that make the international Red List of endangered species) uses a different classification system, but they are based on known actual numbers in the wild.
There might be some discrepancy in what appears to be on the species abundance diagram and what is printed in the text; some context would be required here. One example that comes to mind is Madagascar periwinkle. In Canada because it's so extensively used you would think it would be an incredibly abundant plant. It needs to be mentioned, therefore, that this abundance diagram is related to it's NATIVE range, not necessarily where it exists currently. Madagascar periwinkle is, remarkably, critically endangered in the wild despite it being an invasive species in temperate Canadian gardens and natural areas that back onto residential properties.
I hope you enjoy the new feature; I'm hoping to be able to make these blog posts searchable by species status or abundance, but have yet to find a way to do it easily. Perhaps a feature to come in the near future...that near future it here! I have added a second label cloud and so the clouds now have non-overlapping labels. If you click on a label in the "search by species status" box, it should bring up all of the blog posts that feature that label.
Let me know what you think by dropping me a comment.
No comments:
Post a Comment