National Pollinator Week

According to an email from the Plantsmen, a wonderful native plants nursery around the corner from us, it's National Pollinator Week. I celebrate pollinators every day (including in my May 10 and June 3 posts), but it seemed appropriate to do so again, even briefly.

One of the seemingly indefatigable bumblebees on a columbine flower.

Butterflies are the "preferred" pollinators that so many homeowners seek, and nurseries cater to this bias by labeling plants as "butterfly attractors."  More accurately however, those nectar-filled flowers are "pollinator attractors," and it is the huge diversity of native bees, small predatory wasps, innumerable beetles and other insects that do the bulk of the work.

That said, I too enjoy watching the large, graceful swallowtails flutter-by, while summoning the patience to wait for them to alight long enough to snap a decent photo. And I realize that it will be easier to engage people in creating habitat for butterflies than for bees.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Dame's Rocket

We'll continue to do our part in supporting the pollinators who support us. The more our yard resembles a meadow with a great diversity of native flowering plants throughout the spring, summer and fall, the more pollinators we see. After all, they (and we) can't eat grass!

Chives Will Never Look the Same Again

Chives are an extremely useful and unfussy garden plant. They are among the earliest plants to emerge in spring; offer a ready supply of green onions through the first mild frosts with almost no tending; self-seed readily but not too aggressively; and put forth these lovely purple flowers in late May and early June. There is also some evidence that they may provide anti-fungal benefits to the surrounding plants.

In short, I like them and have several large plants scattered throughout the garden. And we're now experimenting with moving some of smaller "volunteers" near the apple tees in the orchard.

Still, they might not have gotten their own posting. But after work today, I took a cup of cold mint tea out to a chair in one of the only late afternoon sunny spots in the garden. It's right next to the chives. And my attention was immediately caught by all the movement and buzzing to my right. There were almost a dozen different kinds of bees, wasps, butterflies, beetles and other pollinators concentrated in just a few cubic feet. So I went back for the camera.

Before the Fruit Comes the Flowers

A yard full of fruit trees and shrubs is particularly spectacular in May with its profusion of flowers. It's a spring tonic that is especially welcome after a long winter that seemed disinclined to yield to spring. While the timing of each species' flowering is usually spread out over several weeks, many came into bloom at the same time this year, as though the trees simply couldn't wait any longer either. 

Amelanchier (Serviceberry, Juneberry)

The native Serviceberry (Juneberry, Amelanchier) always comes first. On May 6, The Japanese plum burst into bloom overnight, along with the Honeyberry, a Siberian native with small tart dark blue fruit.

Japanese Santa Rosa Plum

Honeyberry

Within a few days, the pear, apple, prune plum, plumcot (an apricot-plum cross) and the first of the peach trees were in bloom as well. So too were the quince and clove current shrubs. 

Flowering Quince

Seckel Pear 

Coral Star Peach

Clove Current

Immediately, our yard was abuzz with pollinators. Although the collapse of the (non-native) honeybee hives threatens the large-scale industrial-agriculture food system and is a disturbing harbinger of the more widespread damage to our environment and ourselves), native bees, wasps and other insects continue to ensure pollination for smaller scale farming. According to Fedco Seeds  (a fantastic source of information about both the work and politics of food growing, as well as a fantastic source of seeds),  it takes 10,000 or more honeybees to do the same amount of pollinating as 250 native mason bees. The native bees fly earlier and later in the day, in colder and wetter conditions, and carry pollen all over their bodies (not just in "pollen baskets" on their hind legs). On the other hand, unlike the social honeybees, it's impossible to corral these solitary dwellers into hives and transport them thousands of miles from farm to farm to pollinate single-species crops. Instead, it's necessary to offer attract them to come and stay with nesting sites (holes in wood or the ground) and a sequential diet of varying food sources spring through fall. (More info from Fedco about attracting native pollinators). 

As usual, there are also a large number of bumblebees, which do form social colonies and like the honeybees are in decline more generally due to habitat loss, climate change and pesticides. But with the abundance of these early sources of nectar (and no pesticides), the bumble bees are the first (or at least, the most apparent) of the pollinators at work in our yard. The honey berry (below) seems to be today's favorite. Watching them enter flower after flower after flower, there's clearly a reason for the saying "busy as a bee". 

Honeyberry with bumblebee