Botanical Provenance; Life or death

Provenance (prɒv(ə)nəns) noun: the place of origin or earliest known history of something.

With provenance comes authenticity, you know what it is, where it came from and where it’s been. Provenance helps museums ensure that the objects they are collecting meet legal and ethical rules. When it comes to art and collectables, provenance drives the price. However, when it comes to plants, provenance has different implications. Plant provenance could be a matter of life or death.

If I were to ask you, where your plants came from would you know? Not which nursery, plant shop, or online retailer, but where did the supplier get them from? I’d be surprised if you knew. I’d be surprised if they knew. A simple questionnaire in the UK found that many plant retailers didn’t know. Even those who collected their seeds or propagated from their own stock plants didn’t all know the origin of their stock. If they don’t know how is anybody else supposed to, but why is this important?

Some plant species have very large natural ranges meaning a single plant species can be found in many different growing environments. Populations of those plants will have developed adaptations to be able to thrive in each of those particular environments. Outwardly, all of the plants may look the same, but internally they could differ. Subtle but important differences, local genetic variation.

Things [plants] that can reproduce, reproduce. Their genetic material is passed on to their offspring and if those offspring survive and reproduce their genetic material is then passed on, and so on. Given enough generations a local variation that favours those particular growing conditions can occur. Given enough generations local variation might lose the ability to reproduce with members from outside of the local area and a new species may occur. A new species might take hundreds if not thousands for generations to arise. The changes we’re talking about are not that extreme. Just some selective fine-tuning within a single species that enables plants with those variations to do better than others. A plant population containing that or those local genetic variations will have the best chance of survival in that location, or in locations with similar environmental conditions.

Plant provenance refers to the source of the plant material that was collected for propagation. For most of us, it is the ‘in similar environmental conditions’ that is the useful bit. If I wished to plant in a relatively dry frost-prone environment, sourcing plants that have come from a location that is dry and frost-prone makes sense. And/or sourcing inland plants to place into a coastal environment wouldn’t make sense. It’s really not that complicated. But we don’t always have to try and match like-for-like. Bad to better, yes. Better to bad, no. Sometimes it can be desirable to source plants from a harsh environment and place them in a nicer, more agreeable location. But the same can’t be said in reverse; don’t expect plants sourced from somewhere nice to thrive in somewhere that is harsh and unforgiving.

For most of us plant provenance is about sourcing a plant or plants that will not only survive but thrive in an intended location. But plant provenance can be applied at a higher more comprehensive level. If one were trying to re-create or maintain an entire ecosystem it would be very important to source the plants from that location, or as close to it as possible. We’re now talking about eco-sourcing. Eco-sourcing (ecological sourcing) is where an entire ecosystem is developed. The entire system meaning all of the plants, and all of the things that live in, under, and on those plants. And all of the things that feed off all of the things that live in, under, and on those plants.

In the same way that local genetic variation can occur in local populations of plants, it can also develop in the fauna and flora that live in, under, and on those plants. There can be subtle but important local differences in pollinators, decomposers, and mycorrhizal fungi. If you are trying to recreate an eco-system ‘similar environmental conditions’ really isn’t good enough.