This winter dad and I spoke at a local gardening club about native plants. Now, we could have gotten in trouble and actually given a definition. Since there are probably as many definitions as there were ladies in the room, we skirted the issue.

For someone in the nursery business targeting home gardeners, my definition can be a bit looser than the die-hards, and those doing restorations. I am willing to call native any plant, selection or cultivar that has a species native to the eastern US in its parentage. See, I told you I wasn't picky.

Case in point. Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, is found in the wild from New York south to Georgia west to Colorado and Texas. No one can argue that it is native. How about some of the new cultivars on the market? These are crosses between the native E. purpurea and Echinacea paradoxa, a yellow-flowered form native to Texas, east to the Ozark region north to Missouri.

The Meadowbrite series, 'Mango' and 'Orange', as well as the Big Skyª series comprising, 'Sundown', 'Sunset', 'Harvest Moon', 'Sunrise', 'After Midnight' and 'Twilight' all result from this cross.

Native? Maybe not, but with flowers ranging from yellow to peachy-pink, to deep orange and magenta, they're not the same old coneflowers, either.

The only problem with these new hybrids is they are vegetatively propagated, from cuttings, and won't come true from seed. If you like to let your coneflowers go to seed to feed the goldfinches over the winter, you may have some rouging to do next summer.

Another option is to plant a few specimens in front that get deadheaded and have some regular ones in the back to feed the birds.

Wild Indigo, or Baptisia is another genus where the breeders have been busy. The most common form available to us is Baptisia australis. It is native to the eastern US, and has beautiful pea-like blue flowers in the spring.

Also called 'Redneck Lupine' it is a member of the legume family, like lupine, but much more heat tolerant. It likes moist, hot, sunny places.

There are several yellow-flowered forms; the most common is Baptisia sphaeracarpa. The taxonomists are still arguing about the names for the white ones. For discussions sake, I'll call it Baptisia alba. The yellow and white species are US natives, but further south.

Chicago Botanic Garden has released some beautiful cultivars in the Prairie Blues series, 'Starlight', 'Solar Flare', and 'Twilight'.

Baptisia australis, our native, is in the parentage, but so are B. sphaeracarpa, B. alba, B. tinctoria and B. brachteata. 'Purple Smoke' and 'Carolina Moonlight' are also beautiful interspecific hybrids from North Carolina.

Native? Probably not, but at 2-3 feet and less wide, with bicolor flowers, I think I'd rather have them.