If you were to buzz at bumblebee height over flyover country this month, you would find spring unfurling petal by petal, the crocuses, daffodils, tulips, forsythia and even the indomitable dandelion blooming noticeably earlier than several decades ago. But if your point of reference stretched back several centuries, you wouldn’t be able to benchmark the season by these common harbingers of spring. None of these flowers would be familiar to you, because none are native to the Americas. Although I live in the heart of the heartland, the seemingly all–American place, my state, Illinois, is ecologically un-American. Despite its “Prairie State” moniker, less than one tenth...
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