National Pollinator Week June 18-24, 2018

National Pollinator Week 2018 starts today.

Let’s start the celebration by taking a look at a new book, Butterfly Gardening: The North American Butterfly Association Guide by Jane Hurwitz.

Why feature butterfly gardening on an ant blog? Butterfly gardening encourages the use of native plants, which supply flowers that are used by many different pollinators as well as butterflies. The leaves and seeds are food for caterpillars, plus other insects that support food webs. Butterfly gardening is win-win!

As for the book, the first part features basic information about common garden butterflies, their life cycles, and their needs. Range maps are included so you can find out which species of butterflies to expect in your area and what some of their common caterpillar food plants are.

Because the recommended species of butterfly garden plants vary depending on where you live, in Part II members of the North American Butterfly Association suggest flowering plants and trees specific to regions around the United States, from the Florida to Portland, Oregon.

Overall, the book is illustrated with gorgeous, captivating photographs. It is also packed with tried-and-true practical information from experienced butterfly experts.

Butterfly Gardening: The North American Butterfly Association Guide is a fantastic resource. Be inspired by a copy today.

Check out some previous posts on the same topic:

Do you have any suggestions for plants that are good for pollinators and/or ants?

Flexibound: 288 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press; Flexibound edition (April 10, 2018)
ISBN-10: 0691170347
ISBN-13: 978-0691170343

Disclosure: This book was provided by the publisher’s representative for review purposes. Also, I am an affiliate with Amazon so I can provide you with cover images and links to more information about books and products. As you probably are aware, if you click through the highlighted title link and purchase a product, I will receive a very small commission, at no extra cost to you. Any proceeds help defray the costs of hosting and maintaining this website.

Rover Ants of Rush Milkweed Flowers

The rush milkweeds are flowering.


The open flowers attract an array of insects.

For example, tarantula hawks seem to prefer milkweed flowers. In fact, they are one of the chief pollinators of the plant.

No surprise that rover ants also visit.

From the swollen appearance of the metasoma of the upper ant, it looks like the worker ants are feeding on nectar.

Wait, the nectaries aren’t open on these buds.

It can be hard to think of something as small as a rover ant as a predator, but they do catch insects like this thrips.

The tarantula hawks, on the other hand, probably aren’t in any danger.

 

For Pollinator Week: Looking at the Science Behind Gardening for Pollinators

Did you know that National Pollinator Week is coming up June 16-22, 2014?

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To get prepared for Pollinator Week, let’s take a look at gardening as a way to encourage local pollinators.

How would you go about it? If you have the typical vast expanse of grass, one step could be to carve out areas from that lawn and start adding beds and borders of a diversity of flowering plants. Over time, you could continue to expand the beds until you reach the point where you can recycle the lawnmower.

Choosing which plants to include in a pollinator garden may be complicated. The best solution is to grow plants that originated in a given area or native plants.

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There are regional plant lists available, but using only native plants is not always possible. These specialized plants may not be available in local nurseries, larger natives may require more space than is available, or there may be local restrictions on landscape appearance that prohibit use of plants that look “messy.”

An alternative is to grow common landscape plants. The question then becomes which ones will suit your local pollinators.

In a recent paper in the journal Functional Ecology, Mihail Garbuzov and Francis L. W. Ratnieks quantified how attractive common landscape plants were to bees and other flying insects in a scientific way. They carried out their studies in Great Britain, but give good suggestions that could be used anywhere. For example, geraniums (flowers of the genus Pelargonium) are not a good choice for a pollinator garden no matter where you live because the flowers produce no nectar.

In this video Dr. Ratnieks explains their techniques and some of their findings:

Did you notice how many of the preferred plants were common herbs? Planting an herb garden would give a double benefit, being useful to your cooking and to pollinators.

The take home message is that spending some time getting to know the habits of your local pollinators before you plant your garden can go a long way towards helping them survive in the future.

What do you think? Are quick observations sufficient to make generalizations about pollinators or should there be more rigorous studies like this one by Garbuzov and Ratnieks?

Reference:

Garbuzov, M., Ratnieks, F. L. W. (2014), Quantifying variation among garden plants in attractiveness to bees and other flower-visiting insects. Functional Ecology, 28: 364–374.

Touch a Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening with Kids

I have talked about gardening for wildlife in the past, especially the idea of gardening for insects other than butterflies. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a recently published book about wildlife gardening with children, Touch a Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening with Kids–Simple Ways to Attract Birds, Butterflies, Toads, and More to Your Garden by April Pulley Sayre.

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Who is the author?

April Pulley Sayre is an award-winning author of nonfiction books for a range of ages, but she specializes in natural history for children. She says she has been growing a wildlife garden for over 20 years and that through her husband’s work, ended up with over 300 species of native plants in her 1.5 acre yard. Now that sounds like fun!

Summary of the book:

Part one discusses looking at the potential of your space, and advises how and why to make observations about nature to determine what might needed to improve it. She suggests recording your observations via a nature journal, photographs and sound recordings. I might add keeping a blog or Flickr stream to share your experiences.

Part two involves planning your garden, preparing your soil, and planting and maintaining your plants. Realistically, Sayre includes a section on how to keep you neighbors happy, too. This is important. Every year our family receives our annual notice from the homeowners’ association to remove the “weeds” from our yard. Once we explain the weeds are actually wildflowers, we are let off the hook. Well, that is, until the next year when we have to call and write again.

Part three discusses some of the wildlife to expect, particularly insects and toads. The insects she briefly highlights are butterflies, dragonflies, and bees. Part four concentrates on attracting birds and their various needs. Finally, part five discusses some of the human aspects, such as reaching out to your community and getting your wildlife garden certified. She also briefly discusses some things that may happen that will cause you to leave or lose your wildlife garden, preparing readers for the realities of life.

Comments:

Given the title, I was hoping for more information about butterfly/insect gardening, which was limited to four short pages and didn’t give many specific details. I understand one handicap about writing this kind of book is that it is impossible to list native plants to use because those will vary so much from place to place and also depend on what wildlife occur in the immediate area. However, some generalizations are possible, such as monarch butterflies use plants of the milkweed family as hosts. To compensate for being general, Sayre lists an extensive number of resources in the back, many of which will have more specific advice.

Touch a Butterfly is a good introduction to wildlife gardening, especially for people who know little about it. The book’s real strength is that Sayre opens the door to the natural world through many excellent suggestions for making careful observations of wildlife all around us. Hopefully you will be inspired to share these insights with children.

Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Roost Books (April 23, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590309170
ISBN-13: 978-1590309179

Disclosure: I am an affiliate with Amazon so I can provide you with cover images and links to more information about books and products. As you probably are aware, if you click through the highlighted title link and purchase a product, I will receive a very small commission, at not extra cost to you. Any proceeds help defray the costs of hosting and maintaining this website.