BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
.Series IX Brooklyn, N.Y., October 26, 1921. No. 9 
PLANT IMMIGRANTS AND NATIVES: 
A COMPARISON 
“America’s Making,’’ a festival and exhibit of three centuries 
of immigrant contributions to our national life, is now in progress 
in the local schools. Its purpose is to show, in popular form, the 
most important historical, economic, and cultural contributions 
that Americans of various lines of racial descent have made to 
the American nation, including agriculture and industry, arts and 
crafts, architecture, folklore, literature, drama, music, and educa- 
tion. In connection with this festival, the Brooklyn Botanic 
Garden has placed on exhibit, from October 15 to 28, specimens of 
the more familiar plants of the local flora in two groups: 1. Those 
strictly native to North America; 2. Those introduced from foreign 
countries — i.e. plant immigrants. The exhibit also includes intro- 
duced plants of economic importance, with an indication of the 
country to which we are indebted tor their introduction. The 
present Leaflet is issued in connection with this exhibit. 
Into the making of America so many races have entered that 
few among us have any true idea of the characteristics of even a 
handful of the nationalities that comprise the metropolis. Foreign 
born people in Greater New York total 34 per cent of the popula- 
tion, and of the 66 per cent remaining none is truly 100 per cent 
American, for the last of our local native Indians passed away 
years ago. 
Whether foreign born in the present generation or in one or 
two preceding, all of us have to work together, fitting our in- 
dividual plans and schemes into those greater plans that have 
made America what it is. Upon the willingness of the individual 
to do this depends the life of our great democracy, and upon the 
willingness and ability of the newcomers among us to bear their 
part depends the future. 
Few of these newcomers, and certainly not many of the 
older inheritors of the privileges and responsibilities of America, 
realize that the plant population which paints our countryside 
with such a gorgeous panorama of vegetation has also a curiously 
mixed ancestry. For, just as in human communities there are 
elements of diversity, so in the plant population near New York 
there is a curious mixture of different races and strains. Unlike 
