Policies

Membership Criteria
Members shall consist of firms and individuals involved in the production, sale or use of native plants, vendors of related products and services, educators, institutions and agencies.

Membership Code of Ethics
Members shall:

Exert every effort toward the preservation and protection of our natural resources.

• Abide by FANN bylaws and conduct business in good faith.
• Abide by all state and federal laws.
• Provide true and correct information to the public.

Important: Invasive non-native plants
FANN specifically requests that members regularly review their plant inventory against most recent Florida Invasive Species Council (FISC) List of Invasive Plant Species and University of Florida (UF) Institute for Food & Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) Assessment, and not sell species identified as invasive, in the regions where they are deemed invasive (e.g., North, Central, or South Florida).

Further, FANN strongly encourages members to annually monitor the most recent Florida Invasive Species Council “Watch List” and the UF IFAS Assessment for species predicted to be invasive. Plant species predicted by the UF IFAS Assessment to be a high invasion risk should be not be sold in the areas where the species is a predicted risk. FANN encourages members to eliminate these species from their inventories.

2024 update: per Board of Directors resolution, FANN recommends against the planting and sale of Tropical Milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, a non-native species that has widely naturalized and is believed by scientists to have disruptive and potentially longterm negative impacts on the health of the Monarch butterfly. FANN members have worked for several years to increase production of various native species of Asclepias (there are 21, but only a small number available in the trade), and strongly encourages the use of native Milkweeds along with a diversity of native wildflowers to support the Monarch and other insect species that nectar, pollinate and reproduce on these plants.

GENERAL POLICIES
Policy regarding the listing of native cultivars
Policy on the preservation & conservation of native plants
Policy on transplanting native plants from the wild

Definitions and Restrictions

About our Plant Listings
FANN lists and promotes only Florida native plants. Cultivars are listed as Florida native plants if they originate naturally within certain ecoregions as defined in our Listing of Cultivars policy.

FANN accepts and follows the definition of “Florida native plant” as adopted by the Florida Native Plant Society. With some exceptions, to specifically identify the nativity of a given species, FANN generally follows the Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida, third edition, by Dr. Richard P. Wunderlin and Bruce F. Hansen, University Press of Florida. We also use the online Plant Atlas which accompanies this book. Exceptions are made in consultation with an in-house committee of our most senior members. Examples of exceptions include:

• FANN growers offer two varieties of native slash pine: Pinus elliotti var. elliotti (North Florida slash) and Pinus elliotti var. densa (South Florida slash).
• FANN lists Juniperus silicola and J. virginiana as separate species.
• FANN lists Quercus laurifolia and Q. hemisphaerica as separate species.

Where regional or local species variation occurs, FANN growers are encouraged to name varieties to indicate these variations until such time as the variety is recognized by taxonomists in an official flora of the state. Examples include Chrysobalanus icaco ‘Horizontal’ (Horizontal Cocoplum), Ulmus americana ‘Florida Population’ (Florida ecotype Elm), and Roystonia regia ‘Florida Population’ (Florida ecotype Royal Palms).

Member Programs
FANN Award Programs