WSU to study how to grow native plants

RICHLAND – Researchers at the Washington State University Tri-Cities campus are preparing to open a new greenhouse to study how native plants are grown.

The 1,650-square-foot greenhouse, which replaces a small starter greenhouse on the campus, will have space to grow about 26,000 plants of roughly 100 species.

Plants that covered the Mid-Columbia region before the landscape gave way to crops and manicured lawns will be grown there. The first few have already been moved into the greenhouse to prepare for a public dedication set for today.

They include silky lupine that grows on the Hanford Reach National Monument’s Arid Land Ecology Reserve; spiny flame flower, a tiny succulent with bright red leaves found on the top of Rattlesnake Mountain; and common dogbane, used by Native Americans for fiber.

“I view this as a new branch of agriculture,” said Steven Link, WSU extension ecologist and associate scientist in the school of biological sciences.

Money for the project comes from an Environmental Protection Agency fine over past problems at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s landfill for low-level radioactive waste. The U.S. Department of Energy, which manages Hanford cleanup, and its contractor, Washington Closure Hanford, proposed paying off a portion of the fine in community projects. The contractor covered the cost.

Demand is increasing for native plants to revegetate areas burned by wildfires, restore areas disturbed by roadwork and other activities, and landscape areas to nurture wildlife and cut water use. But it’s a demand that commercial growers are not prepared to meet, in part because so little is known about how to grow native plants.

Currently, restoration of natural lands ravaged by the Mid-Columbia’s summer brush fires typically is done with about five native species. But before the fire or other disturbance, at least 25 species would have grown in any location, Link said.

The typical restoration work stabilizes the soil, said Barbara Harper, the program manager of environmental health for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Mission, Ore.

But at the new WSU greenhouse, the school, working with area tribes, wants to learn more about how to make the natural ecosystem return, said Allan Felsot, professor of entomology and environmental toxicology.

While native plants may thrive when undisturbed by human activity in the Mid-Columbia, not much is known about how to get them to grow in greenhouses to produce quantities large enough for use in revegetation projects.

Research will be answering questions ranging from what soil is best for different plants to how to propagate the plants for seeds to how the plants interact with other native species. In some cases it will be information needed to make commercial propagation of plants viable.

The first phase of the project has been building the greenhouse and equipping it, Felsot said. Then WSU, in cooperation with the Umatillas, will work with students to study the plants. Growing them will be demonstrated in small trials in the field, he said.