From the Editor

Is it just me, or does it seem like we're all juggling way too many balls in the air? My day job as a USDA Forest Service research scientist brings demands of science and dealing with bureaucracy; I also wear a "technology transfer" hat for the Agency, working with a national team that helps coordinate dissemination of plant regeneration information. And, in my spare time, I try to stay on top of publishing this journal. Like most of you, I'm bombarded with information that proliferates in ever-increasing quantities. The other day I was complaining to a friend who, tired of my complaining, told me to "pull yourself together, Kas, it's a brave new world." I guess. I'm checking e-mail on my iPhone and tapping out this ditty on my laptop as I'm sitting in rush hour traffic on Interstate 5 in Los Angeles. As we crawl along in one of 6 lanes of traffic, I'm looking out the window at the vast sea of concrete and planted exotic species, and I'm contemplating our vocation as native plant people—growers and planters—and our daunting task of doing so in this brave new world where we are connected electronically but less and less connected to our roots (pun intended) provided by Mother Earth. Our new world is one of shrinking budgets and burgeoning pressures on our wildlands, complicated by a populace who no longer have much of a grasp on the bits and pieces of our native ecosystems that sustain us all. At our hotel next to Disneyland (my son was playing trumpet with his high school band in the park), a "natural products" meeting was taking place. Is it reasonable or odd for natural products folks to choose to meet in a venue full of concrete, exotic plants, and extreme materialism in a land of make-believe? I'm not sure; all I can say is "be brave in this new brave world." Keep planting! Native Plants Journal will continue to help you along the way, but not without some changes. During this 11th year of publication, we will be moving from Indiana University Press to the University of Wisconsin Press. IUP has served us well, and we look forward to moving forward with the assistance of UWP. We hope the transition is a smooth one, and we appreciate your patience as we switch gears. We are also working toward a more satisfactory solution to provide you with online content; one-stop searching for everything that has been published in NPJ. The nativeplantnetwork.org site has been revamped as we begin to make that transition.

You can help us, too. NPJ has a couple of immediate needs. We could use a few more associate editors to help us review refereed manuscripts and to work with authors to improve delivery of general technical reports. It's a relatively painless process involving 3 to 5 manuscripts per year. We also have need for a book review editor to solicit potential book reviewers for a handful of books each year. A remarkable number of new books relevant to our field are consistently being published by a wide range of presses, and it would be great to review and share information about more of them. Contact me if you are interested in either of those missions.

In the meantime, enjoy this issue's collection of articles!

On the cover:Betula papyrifera Marsh. (Betulaceae) by R Kasten Dumroese