Poison ivy was one of the native plants of Pennsylvania that John Bartram suggested Europeans should plant in their gardens in 1783. Not surprisingly, when Claire Spampinato compiled a list of Pennsylvania Native Plants for the Garden in 1998, poison ivy was one she left out. If I wasn't familiar with the plant, I called around to nurseries to check. I didn't want to risk people going out and digging them up from the woods. In fact, one of her reasons for promoting native plants as garden flowers is to help mitigate the loss of habitat these species suffer as woods and meadows are turned into shopping malls and interstates.
Native plants attract and feed native birds and butterflies, as well as other beneficial insects.
They provide habitat for birds and other small animals, which are the predators of many garden pests as well as the food source for majestic predators like hawks and eagles. Flowers that used to be so common in people's back yards are now rarer than the 'exotics' like Asian lilies. The pink coreopsis, for example, is a native Pennsylvania plant, but its numbers are very low. Plant communities change throughout time, whether due to climate change, succession, predation, or disturbance. That definition rules out Queen-Anne's lace, the dandelion, and the oxeye daisy, all of which were brought by settlers.