Resources on DC-Area Conservation
Earth Sangha Materials
To learn more about the rationale behind our Wild Plant Nursery, download our Local Propagation Backgrounder. To review the nursery’s inventory, download the Wild Plant Nursery Species List (a spreadsheet file). To learn more about the development of the nursery itself, take a look at the Nursery Archive page.
If you are interested in our stream buffer plantings, you may want to read our booklet, Reconnecting Forests and Streams.
If you would like to learn how to identify the trees and other plants that grow in our region, we recommend that you download our List of Field Guides for the Greater Washington Region. You might also be interested in reading our Backgrounder on White-Tailed Deer and Our Plant Communities.
Other Key Resources
If you know the name (either common or scientific) of a plant that interests you, and you want to find out about its distribution or taxonomy, check the USDA PLANTS Database. (PLANTS records often include many other helpful links.) Large conservation databases are available through NatureServe, but it takes some practice to use them effectively. If you’re a tree nut, you may want to download the US Forest Service's two-volume Silvics of North America. To get in touch with local botanists and native-plant enthusiasts, the Virginia and Maryland Native Plant Societies are great places to start. If you want to explore the scientific literature on plant genetics and restoration, consult the Center for Plant Conservation’s Genetic Considerations in Ecological Restoration Bibliography.
To explore the ecology of local plants (that is, how they “fit” with each other and with other features of the natural world), we recommend that you start with the Natural Communities of Virginia, a resource developed by the Virginia Natural Heritage Program. A similar survey of Maryland is at an earlier stage of development; see the Maryland Natural Heritage Program’s Natural Communities page. The NatureServe databases are also very useful for this purpose.
For regional information on stream buffer restoration, start with the Maryland Department of Natural Resource’s Watersheds and Forest Management page, or with the Virginia Department of Forestry’s Riparian Forest Buffers page.
If you are interested in invasive alien plants, or invasive alien species in general, consult the National Invasive Species Information Center and the vast number of other resources cited therein, or Invasive.org, a project of the University of Georgia and the USDA. For a global perspective on this problem, try the website of the World Conservation Union’s Invasive Species Specialist Group. For a local perspective, get in touch with the Mid-Atlantic Exotic Pest Plant Council.