With financial support from the Maine Landscape and Nursery Association and the University of Maine, a UMaine professor is collecting and growing new varieties of native Maine plants that may one day find their way into home gardens in the state. At the Clapp greenhouse on the UMaine campus, Donglin Zhang, professor in the Landscape Horticulture Program, has amassed an array of rhododendrons, Atlantic cedars, black-eyed Susans and other plants that have unusual foliage or flowers. He is propagating the plants with the goal of establishing reliable varieties of native Maine plants that could be sold by nurseries.
Maine has so many native plants.
During the summer, Zhang and his colleagues Bill Mitchell and Reeser Manley visited nurseries and private gardens in Maine and adjacent states . To date, they have identified 37 unusual varieties of plants for further study, such as a rhododendron that produces a double pistillate flower where normally only one is present. They also have several unusual varieties of black-eyed Susans that have many more petals than the common variety that decorates road sides All of the varieties are the result of natural mutations in the plants. Helping to identify varieties and breed them are both graduate and undergraduate students who receive training in horticultural techniques. In a pilot program with Acadia National Park, Zhang is also propagating plants that are native to Mt. Desert Island.