The University of Arizona Press

“In highly personal, playful language, Juliet Stromberg offers a sympathetic counterpoint to those who demonize ‘nonnative’ plants. We’ve all done it, but it’s time to stop stigmatizing a plant for its style. We are the ultimate weed, and we’d better recognize it. Stromberg advises us how.”—Walt Anderson, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, Prescott College

“Stromberg has written a masterful treatise on why a knee-jerk response to eradicating nonnative plants is not just misguided but counterproductive for achieving our conservation goals. She offers a well-supported but fundamentally different perspective on the role of nonnative plants in our urban and natural environments. Her book is told through a series of vignettes, in which various plant species, in all their quirky and individual natures, are the main characters. This informative and entertaining book should be on the reading list for anyone serious about understanding the role of nonnative species in our environments.”—Dov F. Sax, co-editor of Species Invasions: Insights into Ecology, Evolution, and Biogeography

“Julie Stromberg articulates, with personal knowledge and deep love, a new way to understand and care for a changing world. She offers us a fresh and compelling vision of what it might mean to ‘be willing to accept and respect the life that will grow.’”—Erick Lundgren, University of Alberta, Canada

“Man the barricades. Exterminate the aliens. Too many environmentalists speak in such terms about ‘invader’ species. But this nativist talk is malign, counterproductive, and the opposite of what nature lovers should be doing, says Arizona plant ecologist Juliet Stromberg in her erudite love story of nature in the American Southwest.”—Fred Pearce, author of The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation