Gov. Mark Gordon has announced April is Wyoming Native Plant Month. It is already nationally recognized as such.
Wyoming is home to more than 2,500 native plant species. Gordon encouraged Wyomingites to educate themselves on native plants in the state.
“We tend to focus on our spectacular wildlife that's so visible, and forgetting that all of this wonderful wildlife that we have relies totally on the vegetation of our state,” said Dorothy Tuthill, treasurer of the Wyoming Native Plant Society. “And when we look at it are pretty landscapes, of course, we're seeing mostly vegetation too.”
Tuthill said native plants have been in this area for potentially thousands if not ten of thousands of years and our wildlife has evolved with them. Many insects rely on plant species for their survival too.
“This is especially important when we think of smaller organisms, insects and other invertebrates, [which] are often specialized on plants or a few kinds of plants,” said Tuthill. “And so replacing these native plants with introduced species just doesn't meet the needs of the insects. And losing insects, of course, is a serious problem.”
While April is a good time in many places across the nation to go outside and see plants blooming, Tuthill said April is a good time to educate oneself on native plants in the state but to wait till May or so to go outside and be able to see plants blooming.
