What’s a UK native plant and what’s a non-native plant?
Added on 24 January 2023
A plant is considered a UK native if it arrived here naturally ie. without any human influence. These are plants evidenced through fossil records to have arrived here between the finish of the last ice age around 9500 years BC when our island was connected via a land bridge with mainland Europe and around 6000 years BC when waters rose separating us from mainland Europe. It is thought that a mere 1600 plant species colonised our island during this time arriving primarily by wind and animal action.
Plants brought over purposefully such as a culinary or medicinal plant by an invading army or accidentally as seeds on the soles of a invading soldiers feet are not considered natives.
However many plants considered UK natives share similar characteristics with plants from Europe, Asia and North America. This is because going back further in time to the Triassic period (200 million years ago) what is now the UK and the other northern hemisphere continents where all connected as the supercontinent, Laurasia. For this reason RHS researches use the term near-natives. Plants from Southern Hemisphere continents such as Australia and New Zealand which the UK was not joined with are known as exotics.
Today it is estimated that there are around 50,000 species of plants in the UK, this figure includes varieties and non natives. Plants that arrived before 1500 are often classified as archaeophytes. This is an honorary indigenous native classification because they have been here so long, since ancient times. Plants arriving after this are classified as neophytes. The cut of date in the UK is 1500 because Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World (America’s) in 1492 after which a wide spread transfer of plants, animals, minerals and other commodities including human populations and diseases began with the Old World.