10/31/07 Taking advantage of Idaho native plants

For years he work with potato breeding. Now Steve Love is raising native plants, some of which are drought resistant, some are more resistant to fire and some are very beautiful. LOVE "We looked most at wild flowers to begin with perennials like penstomons, lupines, globe mallow, Indian paintbrush. There's a bunch of different things that we've looked at, that we are looking at. In the last year or so we've started concentrating a little bit more on the woody plants, the shrubs and trees. Love works at the University of Idaho Aberdeen Research facility where he has two and a half acres of native plants which are raised for seed production. LOVE "We've collected in the desert acres across southern Idaho. We've done major collections in the Owyhee Mountains, and in the Pioneer mountains and the Seven Devils country." Love says the seeds he's collecting from these plants are intended for Idaho landscaping. LOVE "Take those that have the best horticultural characteristics, the nicest appearance, the most disease resistance, the longest flowering period, the best survival in the winter, all of those things that are important to a homeowner and make these available for low maintenance landscape purposes." Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott