Round Two in my battle with the furry little chompers of my herbs

[athena]

96. Native plants have evolved with the wildlife.

If they were too pleasant to eat, the animals would eat them, and the plant would not be able to survive. Over the millennia, the plants that survived were those that evolved characteristics that made them relatively unpalatable to animals, such as bad taste, bad smell, or low-level toxicity. Having planted native plants in my garden, I've observed that the animals will still eat them, but not to the ground, as they will with exotic plants. Deer, for example, will occasionally eat a few leaves off my American hazelnuts and red-osier dogwoods, but not the way they ate my exotic roses. One has to protect the plant the first year, but once it's developed a solid root system, the animals are not able to destroy them.

Not being a vegetable gardener, I'm guessing that most of what we consider vegetables are probably pretty exotic, but I'm sure that if one looked into what native Americans ate, one would find many species of edible plants that animals aren't all that crazy about.