What to call non-native plants
September 29, 2025
On a recent episode of the Native Plants, Healthy Planet podcast titled "The Return of Rebecca McMackin", there was a thoughtful discussion about using a different term than "invasive" for plants that are not native to an area. McMackin argued that, particularly given the current xenophobic and authoritarian turn the United States has taken, some people could view native-plant advocates' use of "invasive" as xenophobic itself. I'm a bit skeptical of that (it seemed purely anecdotal or even perhaps hearsay), but ok, I can see it. She also noted that the term blamed plants themselves, as if they were intentionally trying to "invade" places they were not native to, and that it erased the human (mostly horticultural) element of how they were introduced to an area. As an alternative, she said she favored "disruptive introduced" despite its clunkiness. I have to agree that it is clunky. Because of that, I don't imagine it will actually get much traction. But beyond being clunky, it also has its own problems: are there "introduced" plants that aren't "disruptive"? The answer is no, they are all disruptive, but the term would suggest otherwise.
So, as the title to this post suggests, I'd argue that we should just call them "non-native". It's easy to say, it's obvious what it means, the concern about some sort of American-first native plant movement is avoided, and it would be easy to go into further detail about why it matters if the particular conversation merits it.