As a member of the Iowa Native Plant Society you are encouraged to promote conservation, education and the appreciation of Iowa’s native plants. This group consists of amateur and professional botanists, gardeners and plant enthusiasts. Anyone with an interest in native plants is invited to join. See their website for information.
Members receive the newsletter Erythronium. (The Erythronium is a genus of Eurasian and North American plants in the lily family.) Newsletters are published one to three times a year.
There are different types of prairies from short grass to tall grass prairies with a range of soil conditions from very dry to wet. Iowa is the heart of the tall grass prairie which used to cover 30 million acres or 80% of the state of Iowa, now due to agricultural and urban development this has been reduced to less than 0.1 %.
Wildflowers of Iowa Woodlands by 
Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa by 
Louis Hermann Pammel (1862-1931) was a botanist who spent many productive years in Iowa not only as an educator, but as an instigator for the conservation of the native plants of Iowa and the development of Iowa State Parks. A prolific writer he published many scholarly articles and books on the wide range of his botanical interests such as economic botany, plant pathology, bacteriology, mycology, horticulture, forestry, bees and pollination, seeds and germination, flowers, grasses, climate, ecology, and conservation.
The Seed Savers Exchange founded in 1975 and located in Decorah, Iowa is a non-profit organization that preserves and shares the heirloom seeds of our garden and food crop heritage for future generations. Become part of a community seed library and grow!
