Sneezing time

THIS IS A MISERABLE TIME of year for many allergy sufferers. Unfortunately, people with allergies often blame the wrong plants, which does nothing to relieve their suffering and may prevent them or even their neighbors from planting harmless species.

Left, the pollen of Common ragweed causes most respiratory allergies at this time of year. This photo is by Forest and Kim Starr, via the Wikipedia Commons.

As it happens, a wildlife-friendly garden is likely to be an allergy-sufferer's best friend. Why? Because plants that are pollinated by insects tend to have heavy pollen. Because it’s heavy, this pollen is not carried on the wind, which means that it does not have a chance to get into your nose and start the immune-system reaction known as an allergy attack. So a wildlife-friendly garden full of flowers that are being visited by butterflies, bees, and other pollinators is not likely to cause allergic reactions.

In late summer, the chief cause of respiratory allergy symptoms is ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia). This is an annual weed that’s common in the Northeast, Midwest, and South. Although it’s native to North America, I’ve never heard anyone recommend it as a garden plant!

Ragweed pollen can travel hundreds of miles but most of it lands near the plant, so the closer the plant is to you the more likely it is that the pollen will end up in your nose. If there is any ragweed growing near you, the best way to dispose of it is probably to wet it down (to make the pollen grains heavy, so they don’t scatter), then cut it back carefully and again carefully put the stems into a plastic garbage bag, which can be put out with the trash. The best time to do this would be early on a chilly morning, when pollen production would be at its lowest.

For future years, the best way to keep ragweed off your property is to plant aggressive perennials, preferably ones that are pollinated by insects, because these plants can prevent the annual ragweed from getting a foothold in your garden. In other words, have a wildlife-friendly garden! Goldenrod might be a good choice because it is insect pollinated and extremely aggressive.

One warning: People who are allergic to ragweed pollen may also be allergic to the pollen of other plants in the Aster family. Now, the Aster family is huge and includes many wonderful wildlife-friendly plants with heavy pollen, including Goldenrod and Purple coneflower. It would be a tragedy for any wildlife-friendly gardener to give up these plants altogether. But if you are allergic to ragweed, you may want to plant these species further from your house and avoid bringing the flowers into your house or working right next to them during pollen season. Sniffing the flowers of plants in the Aster family would also be ill-advised, as that would pull even heavy pollen into your nose.

Meanwhile, here are a few ways to keep allergies under control this time of year. Most of them come from the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology.

• Try to stay inside with the windows closed when pollen counts are high. This is generally between 10 am and 4 pm on dry days. (Rainy days are safer because the rain washes the pollen out of the air.) You can get local pollen counts from the National Allergy Bureau at (800)-9-POLLEN, or http://www.pollen.com/.
• An air conditioner helps because it cools and dries the air, an HEPA filter can clean the pollen out of the air.
• And of course you need to avoid anything that would stir up pollen or bring pollen into your house during pollen season, from raking leaves to hanging clothes outside to dry (because pollen collects on the clothes). If you've been working outside, change your clothes when you come inside.
• If you do go outside when pollen counts are high, you could try wearing a pollen mask.
• Another tip is to keep your bedroom closed up during the day and then bathe before you go to bed. This will prevent pollen from getting into your bedding.
• Also, I'm sure any allergy sufferer who is willing to take drugs has already tried all the over-the-counter drugs, but have you tried nasal rinsing? This will wash pollen grains out of your sinus cavities. Here are instructions from the AAAAI.

Amazing things you can do in a wild garden #1

In answer to a reader's question, I've just provided instructions on how to move a bumblebee nest. Yes, it can be done. I can't say that I recommend it. For one thing, there is a slight chance you'll get stung. Also, the bees will die in late fall and you can then destroy the nest without harming them.

However, if the nest is in a spot where the bees simply cannot be allowed to stay, it is possible to move them to a nest box and then put them somewhere that's safe for them and you. If you put them in the right kind of nest box (see below), you can even enjoy watching the activities inside the nest.

If you'd like to know how, check out the instructions in the Question & Answer section I've started on the right-hand side of the blog. If you want to see previous Q&As (just one so far, but I hope they'll accumulate) check out the new website I've started. I plan to archive all my old posts here in hope that I do a better job of organizing them than I can here at the blog, so the information will be easier to use.

The information on moving bumblebee nests is adapted from a wonderful book, by the way. I recommend Brian L. Griffin's Humblebee Bumblebee: The Life Story of the Friendly Bumblebees and Their Use by the Backyard Gardener to anyone who's interested in bumbles. The book is hard to find in stores but is still available from Brian's website , which is now being run by his daughter, Lisa Novitch.

The company Brian founded, Knox Cellars, specializes in orchard mason bees, another wonderful native bee. But they do sell a few bumblebee items including the Humble Bumble Observation Home, which Brian designed so that you can actually peek in and watch the bumbles at work. If you have bumbles to move, I'm sure you couldn't find a better new home for them than one of Brian's Humble Bumble homes.

Update: I'm very happy to report that Alicia and her husband, who are sure that the insects nesting in their eves are bumblebees, have decided to put off further construction work until late fall so as not to have to disturb the nest. On behalf of pollinators and pollinator-lovers everywhere, thank you Alicia!

The illustration at the top of this post is courtesy of Dover Publications. It was a free sample from their Full Color Fruit Crate Labels CD-Rom and book.

Bees Facing a Flower Shortage?

There's a good article on the Scientific American website that tells a CSI-style story of efforts to determine what causes Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious die-offs that are killing large numbers of honeybees and threatening a number of agricultural crops that are honeybee-pollinated, including almonds and blueberries.

The bad news for those who like CSI-style endings is that it looks like there's no one culprit. Evidently a range of stressors are undermining the bees' ability to fend off disease.

One of these stressors is especially interesting to wildlife-friendly gardeners, however: Namely, the bees are apparently suffering from a flower shortage. To quote the article:

"We and other experts also suspected that the bees' natural defenses might be undermined by poor nutrition. Honeybees and wild pollinators, too[,] no longer have the same number or variety of flowers available to them because we humans have tried to 'neaten' our environments. We have, for example, planted huge expanses of crops without weedy, flower-filled borders or fencerows. We maintain large green lawns free of any 'weeds' such as clover or dandelions. Even our roadsides and parks reflect our desire to keep things neat and weed-free. But to bees and other pollinators, green lawns look like deserts. The diets of honeybees that pollinate large acreages of one crop may lack important nutrients, compared with those of pollinators that feed from multiple sources, as would be typical of the natural environment." (Emphasis added.)

So here's my new motto, something to remember the next time you're giving yourself a hard time for having a "messy" garden:

Save a dandelion, save a bee

Let yourself be messy. The bees (and a lot of other critters) will live better if you do.

Gardens BEE Very Important!

Long-horned bees, Melissodes spp., are among the native bees being studied by scientists at the U. of California, Berkeley. The researchers found that males of this genus like to sleep overnight in cosmos flowers. (The flower shown in this photo, however, is a verbena.) The photo was taken by Johnny N. Dell, bugwood.org, and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

THERE'S A GREAT NEW ARTICLE about native bees in the March/April issue of Orion magazine. In "The Headbonker's Ball," Matt Jenkins visits a U. of California Berkeley entomologist and grad students who are studying California's native bees. What makes the work of entomologist Gordon Frankie unusual is that he focuses on cities rather than on rural areas. He has found that native bees are doing better in urban areas than they are in California's agricultural regions.

Gardens As Reservoirs

This finding is similar to one I reported last July. That study, conducted in England, found that wildlife-friendly gardens were critical to the survival of threatened British bees. Likewise in the very different environment of California, Frankie and his grad students are finding that properly designed and maintained gardens are now better habitat for bees (and presumably for other pollinators as well) than agricultural areas where farmers grow only one crop and also may make frequent use of pesticides.

In other words, here is still more evidence that what we do in our gardens can be vital to the survival of species. As Frankie puts it in the Orion article, a garden can be "a reservoir of genetic material" helping to keep species alive when their natural habitat has been lost.

Findings From a Bee Garden

In order to explore the contributions gardens can make to survival of native bees, Frankie et al. started an urban bee garden in Berkeley back in 2003. Among their findings: Although a few non-native plants do seem to be helpful to bees, native bees are six times more likely to visit native plants than non-natives. At least in California, plants in the Salvia family (that is, sages) seem to be among the best bee-attracting plants. But Frankie stresses the importance of planting a variety of plants, as different plants attract different bees and plants that bloom at different times provide food throughout the growing season. He also encourages gardeners to dead-head plants as they finish blooming, in order to encourage a second flush of bloom.

Also important: Leave patches of bare earth so that native bees that nest in holes in the ground can find somewhere to live. "Bare earth" means not just soil that is free of plants but also soil that is free of plastic or even thick mulch.

For more information on what Frankie and friends are up to, check out their Urban Bee Gardens website, and don't miss the excellent article in Orion.

Have you seen these bees?

IF YOU LIKE A TREASURE HUNT, you're going to love this. The Xerces Society is asking gardeners and others to look for several species of bumblebees that were once thought to be very common but are now feared to be in severe decline. Xerces were kind enough to let me republish the images of the bees you see to the left, by the talented artist Elaine Evans, in hope of inspiring readers to be on the lookout for these little ladies this spring. If you are a blogger, please help to spread the word, and do let me know what sightings are reported to you!

The image above shows yellow-banded bumblebee, Bombus terricola, a personal favorite because it is the one I might see here in my own garden in Nova Scotia. A characteristic to look for in this species is the fringe of bright yellow hair at the end of the abdomen. Bumblebee species also vary considerably in the pattern of black and yellow on their bodies, as you'll see from the remaining pictures.

Yellow-banded bumblebees were common throughout most of their range (which included most of the Northeast and most of the band along the American-Canadian border) until the late 1990s, when suddenly sightings almost ceased. I'm happy to say that, after hearing that the Xerces Society was looking for this bee, my friend and fellow Nova Scotian gardener Jodi DeLong produced a photograph of one--taken in her own garden. For details on how you might also be able to identify a yellow-banded bumble bee, visit this page at the Xerces website.

Next (left) is another Eastern bumble, the rusty patched bumblebee (B. affinis). A characteristic of this bee is the small rust-colored patch on the second abdominal segment. Once common in the East and much of the Midwest, it has not been found in most of its range since 2003. To learn more about how to identify this bee, visit this page at the Xerces website.

Finally, the last of the three bees is the Western bumblebee, B. occidentalis, shown below right. This bee actually has several quite different color variations, depending on where it's found. The pattern shown here is characteristic of the species in Northern California to British Columbia. A quite different color pattern is found in the species in central coastal California, and yet another pattern in those found from the Rocky Mountains to Alaska. For details on how to identify this bee, visit this page at the Xerces Society website.

Anyone who sees one of these bees is asked to contact Sarina Jepsen at the Xerces Society. If you have photos or a collection of bumblebees or have any other evidence of past sightings, the Society would like to hear about these as well.

As a bonus for visiting, the Xerces site has downloadable "Wanted" posters for the bee species they're looking for. These posters make amusing decorations and are a good way to remind yourself to watch for these bees in your garden. I plan to download the poster for yellow-banded bumblebee and put in on the kitchen door, where I'll see it whenever I'm headed out.

It's believed that these bees may be declining because of a disease that was transmitted via bumblebees transported commercially for use as pollinators in greenhouses. The commercial bumblebee industry is one of many potantial threats to wild bumbles, another being loss of habitat. Wildlife-friendly gardening is an important way to help these and many other pollinating species. Supporting the Xerces Society, one of the finer wildlife organizations I know, is another.

Where Did All the (Insects and Spiders) Go?

"January" is taken from Hone's Everyday Book by William Hone, published 1826. Thanks to FromOldBooks.org for making this image available on the Net.

WITH WINTER DOING ITS WORST THIS YEAR, many of us are seeing a lot of birds and squirrels at the feeders. But other animals we see frequently in summer, such as chipmunks and most insects, are nowhere to be found. Here’s a little overview of where some of your gardening friends are spending the winter, starting with insects and spiders.

Animals that are not warm-blooded, as mammals are, have difficulty generating enough heat to use their muscles in cold weather. With cold, their muscles stop responding and they just slow down until they finally can't move any more. This is why you'll sometimes find a "sleeping" bee on a flower in the early morning: The over-eager bee got caught by dropping temperatures and became dormant before it could get home. Usually the bee will "wake up" as soon as it warms up.

Insects and spiders and other animals that are referred to as cold-blooded (though what is circulating in their bodies is not, technically, blood), typically either die with the first frost or spend cold days "asleep"--that is, in a state more properly referred to as dormancy. They are very vulnerable during dormancy, and are a lot safer if they have a sheltered spot in which to hide.

Butterflies

Some butterflies migrate to warmer climates. (Monarchs are famous for this.) But many dormant butterflies are present in and around your garden all winter. Depending on species, they may overwinter as caterpillars, in the chrysalis (the enclosure in which they transform from caterpillars into adults), or as adults. Woodpiles, brushpiles, untended flower beds, and trees with loose bark are all popular spots for overwintering butterflies.

Bumblebees

Most bumblebees die when cold weather arrives. However, the pregnant queens survive, spending winters in abandoned mouse nests or other holes in the ground, waiting for warm weather to lay their eggs and raise a new crop of worker bees. Because of their “furry” coats and ability to generate heat by shivering, bumbles are able to move around even during fairly cold weather. (They even are found in the Arctic tundra, where they pollinate the small patches of wildflowers that grow on the carcasses of dead animals.) This is why bumblebees are often the first insects you’ll see in spring. It's also why that bee you find sleeping on a flower in the morning is probably a bumble; they're the ones most likely to still be out even when temperatures are dropping.

Spiders

Dormant spiders are often found in leaf litter, where they wake up and move around on warmer days. These spiders are an important source of winter food for birds, which is why you’ll see small birds poking around in the leaf litter in your garden if you were kind enough to leave it there for them. Contrary to a widespread misconception, outdoor spiders rarely enter homes in search of heat; spiders that are adapted to life outdoors probably can’t survive indoors, as the indoor air will be too dry for them. Spiders found living inside homes are usually nonnative spiders that are adapted to living in dry, warm climates. If you take them outside, they will probably die.

Diapause

Many insects experience not only dormancy but also diapause. Unlike dormancy, which is a physiological reaction to dropping temperature, diapause is a genetically programmed response that often triggered by changes in the length of the day. In diapause, the animal doesn’t just stop moving but also stops developing; this is nature’s way of ensuring that it will be at the proper stage of development (e.g., emerging from the chrysalis) at the right time of the year (e.g., when flowers are in bloom).

Another Bee Site

Above, California poppy is one of the plants recommended at the Urban Bee Garden site. California poppy is native in California and can be grown easily from seed in many other parts of North America. It will grow in extremely poor soil, in fact is good for naturalizing along a roadside. But it does seem to need a lot of sun. Like Cosmos, which also is recommended for pollinators and is easy to grow from seed, it tends to reseed itself from year to year.

WHILE I WAS WORKING ON PART II of my history of native plants and gardening, among the sites that googled up was Urban Bee Garden: A Practical Guide to Introducing the World's Most Prolific Pollinators to Your Garden, sponsored by the Urban Bee Project at the University of California, Berkeley. The site includes a good overview of bee gardening and two lists of bee plants. The short list of easy-to grow plants includes these favorites of mine, which will grow almost anywhere: sunflowers, cosmos, California poppy, pincushion flower, penstemons (need sun and good drainage), lavender (not all varieties are equally hardy), lamb's ear, Coreopsis, buckwheat (good cover crop), catnip, and borage. For those who want to dig deeper (so to speak), the site also offers a nine-page .pdf file containing details on both native and nonnative plants and their appeal to honeybees and California bees.

Quick Take: An Ode to Be Visited

"THIS WEEK AT HILTON POND" is always worth a visit, but this week they have an especially visit-worthy installment. "Ode to Goldenrod" is a photo essay with text devoted to the many small organisms that make their homes among these flowers. The photo essay is composed of large, perfectly focused close-up shots of creatures such as the jumping spider (shown gazing at the photographer calmly, using four of its eight eyes), the green lynx spider and a batch of its hatchlings, a katydid, several wasps, and of course the ever-present and always beloved bumblebee. The photos are all accompanied by text that discusses the life and habits of the creatures pictured.

"This Week at Hilton Pond" is a weekly newsletter posted to the website of the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History. According to the author, Bill Hilton Jr., the newsletter is devoted to phenology, "the study of change in nature--including the unfolding of seasons and the sometimes subtle ways in which plants, animals, and habitats respond to different photoperiods, variations in temperature, and other biotic and abiotic factors." I had never heard that word until I read it at this website, but I think I will be using it often in future. (In fact, these days I often think that I am much more a phenologist than I am a gardener!) My only complaint about "This Week at Hilton Pond" is that they don't seem to maintain a browsable directory of entries. You can search the site for a topic if you know what you're looking for, or you can page through old entries in the series by working your way backwards from the current installment, but there is no list of topics you can browse. (Or at least I didn't find one.) But this is a quibble compared to the quality of the writing and photography on this blog.

For my own reflections on goldenrod, please see this post.

Meet the Natives: Goldenrod

IT DOESN'T CAUSE HAYFEVER. Because it blooms at about the same time as ragweed, goldenrod (Solidago spp.) is unfairly blamed for a lot of red eyes and runny noses. But goldenrod is not the culprit. In fact, grains of goldenrod pollen, being both large and sticky, must be carried around by insects; this means that they are not windborne, thus are highly unlikely to end up in your nose and sinus passages, thus are even unlikelier to cause any irritation of same.

Now that we've disposed of the leading cause of prejudice against goldenrod, let's talk about all the ways in which it is a wonderful plant.

There are many species of Solidago (16 in my province alone), almost all of them with bright yellow fall flowers that are highly attractive to pollinators, especially bees. The goldenrods are notoriously difficult to tell apart, especially since they can hybridize with one other. Of the wild goldenrods, however, perhaps the most beautiful (and also one of the more common) is Canada or tall goldenrod (S. canadensis), which is shown in all the photos on this page. The sight of those brilliant gold plumes, on top of plants that can grow as tall as 6 feet, is one of the glories of late summer and early fall in almost every state and in much of Canada.

Left: Wild goldenrod naturalizes well (some would say too well). The attractive, thick mass of goldenrod on this slope leading down to my pond will help to hold the soil and prevent weeds from taking over.

Wild goldenrod can be extremely useful as a groundcover: It spreads readily, can be mowed (and will even bloom after mowing, at a height of about 8 inches), is tough enough to take foot traffic, and has the interesting property of suppressing germination of seeds in the surrounding area, making it particularly useful for weed control. On top of all that, it provides pollen for pollinators, feeds the caterpillars of several butterflies and moths, and makes a good cut flower.

Left: Although somewhat unruly, wild goldenrod can give a splash of yellow to wilder corners of the garden in late summer. In this corner, the purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) were planted, but the goldenrod, yarrow (Achillea millefolium), and anise hyssop (a nonnative) all volunteered.

Goldenrod has been appreciated by English gardeners since the 18th century. Like so many other North American natives, however, it did not become popular with American gardeners until the last few decades.

Even so, most gardeners shy away from wild goldenrod, which will readily take over any area to which it's introduced or to which it introduces itself (as it spreads quite well from seed). While they might let it naturalize in a sunny meadow, most gardeners prefer to keep goldenrod out of perennial borders; even native-plant enthusiasts think twice about including goldenrod in plantings, if they hope to be able to keep their less vigorous native plants.

Not so the many cultivars of goldenrod, however. These are a boon to the goldenrod-lover who would also like to grow something else. Well-mannered cultivars suitable for gardens include "Early Bird" (an early bloomer, as the name implies), "Leraft" (dwarf), and "Wichita Mountains" (also short). Some others I find particularly interesting are:

• "Crown of Rays" (aka "Strahlenkrone"), apparently a cultivar of S. canadense, is compact, and the flower heads bow over so that they are almost parallel with the ground. When the flower heads are dense enough, they resemble golden rays of sun.
• "Fireworks," a cultivar of S. rugosa that was developed in collaboration with the North Carolina botanical garden, typically grows 3-4 feet tall. "The 3-foot-tall stems are unbranched for about 2/3 of their length. Then suddenly, they explode into many slender side shoots, each of which in turn carries an explosion of axillary branchlets coated with tiny yellow flowers. The effect is that of a star-shaped firework that continues to open outward in successive explosions," writes Mary Hirshfeld in an article at the Cornell University website, which also has a nice picture of the plant.
• "Golden Fleece," a cultivar of S. sphacelata, was found growing wild in North Carolina. "Its flowering branches cascade in a lacy network over a rosette of scalloped, semi-evergreen leaves," according to Susan McClure writing in Flower & Garden magazine in December 1996. (As you can see, these cultivars bring out the poet in garden writers.) This one was named a "plant of merit" by the Missouri Botanical Garden.
• "Golden Baby" is my favorite goldenrod for the perennial border. A short form of S. canadensis, it reaches only about 2 feet, with an unusually long bloom time. To me it looks like an exact duplicate of my favorite wild goldenrod, only in miniature.
• "Goldrush" is a cultivar of S. cutleri, a naturally short goldenrod that is native to mountains in New England. The cultivar, developed in 1998, forms mounds that are about a foot tall but can grow to 30 inches in width.
• "Gold Spangles," a hybrid, is not only short (2 foot) but also has gold-splashed foliage.

A word of warning: Not all goldenrods or goldenrod cultivars are native to North America. Though its cultivars are often sold in North America, S. virgaurea is European. As far as I've been able to find out, the popular cultivar "Peter Pan" is of this European origin. If you are trying to maintain a native garden, you will want to try to stay away from the European solidagos. I would also be inclined to avoid them out of concern that they could spread into natural areas or hybridize with local natives.

Goldenrods will grow almost anywhere that has full sun. S. canadense and most of the cultivated goldenrods like moist soils as long as they are not waterlogged.

Some goldenrod trivia from the Wikipedia:

• Goldenrod can be used to make several shades of natural dye.
• When caterpillars try to eat goldenrod, the plant defends itself by forming a hard bulb or gall around the insect. Some wasps have learned to lay eggs in these galls; the wasp larvae use the caterpillars for food. Woodpeckers have learned to open the galls and eat both the caterpillars and the wasp larvae. (And the beat goes on!)
• Pure goldenrod honey is light colored and has a spicy taste. If it's mixed with nectar from other fall plants, however, the honey may be dark and strong.
• Goldenrod is a natural source for a sturdy, long-lasting rubber. The inventor Thomas Edison developed a 12-foot-tall goldenrod that produced large quantities of this product.
  

Bumbles in Danger, Gardens to the Rescue

I couldn't resist this lovely closeup of a bumblebee (soon to be appearing as wallpaper on my computer) by "Trounce" via Wikimedia. It's licensed for limited use via Creative Commons.

GARDENS CAN HELP TO SAVE BUMBLEBEES. That's the news being reported by the BBC, based on a new study, conducted in England where there is grave concern about declines in bumblebee populations. Three species of bumblebee have become extinct in the UK in recent years, and at least 5 more of the UK's 25 species are threatened, according to the Beeb.

The new research comes from a citizen-science project called the British Bumblebee Nest Survey, conducted in summer 2004. More than 700 volunteers each checked an area of their garden and one of six other habitats for 20 minutes, looking for bumblebee nests. They found that their gardens contained an average of 36 bumblebee nests per hectare (2.5 acres).

The gardens included in this study tended to be wildlife-friendly, because the volunteers tended to be wildlife-friendly people. They probably contained more trees, ponds, compost piles, and bird nest boxes than average. So (as the weight-loss ads say) results may not be typical. But the study revealed that wildlife-friendly gardens, at any rate, can be ideal nesting habitat for bumblebees. What's more, the finding held true regardless of garden size.

Among the attractions were spots where sheltered areas adjoin open areas, which seems to be the type of area bumbles prefer for nesting. Examples include hedges, fences, and garden buildings. Also, bumblebees like to nest in spots with soft earth, such as compost heaps and flower beds, as well as in cavities such as those supplied by bird nest boxes. Finally, plants that bloom throughout the season are potentially an excellent source of nectar and pollen for bumbles, especially if the gardener favors "old fashioned" or "cottage style" plants.

Juliet Osbourne, lead author of this report, works for Rothamsted Research in Hertforshire, England, a 160-year-old center for research on sustainable land management. A .pdf with a more detailed report on the study is available online. For more information about bumblebee conservation in Britain, visit The Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

Bee Gardening from the WSJ

Turn a teapot into a bumblebee nest? Hey, I always end up drinking coffee anyway.

THE BUMBLEBEE HAS A STING FACTOR OF 2.5. I learned this from an article in the online real estate section of the Wall Street Journal. What's more -- and this is really exciting -- more and more gardeners are defying that sting factor in order to make bee gardens!


Check out this video tour of a beautiful bee garden, courtesy of the WSJ.

In an article titled "Gardens With a Buzz," June Fletcher reports that homeowners are getting concerned about reports of declining honeybee populations. (For more on this, see my post on gardeners and the honeybee crisis.) In response, "the garden industry is pushing homeowners to create bee gardens that will attract and nourish [honeybees] as well as other, indigenous species."

Fletcher says that although "big-box" stores haven't picked up the trend yet, companies that have started selling bee plants and bee nest boxes are reporting strong sales. These include Smith & Hawken in Novato, Calif., and Dutch Gardens, a division of Gardener's Supply in Burlington, Vt.

The article contains profiles of gardeners and an excellent overview of bees and their needs. It's worth visiting just for the chart showing five bee species (honeybee, orchard mason bee, bumblebee, sweat bee, and leaf cutter bee) with photos, "sting factor," favorite plants, and comments. Among the latter is the suggestion that an old teapot could be buried with just the spout poking above ground, in order to make a nesting site for bumblebees. What a great way to repurpose any unused or broken pot, especially one with a narrow neck.

As for that "sting factor," I thought I'd heard of everything having to do with bees, but I'd never heard of this pain index developed by entomologist Justin O. Schmidt of Tucson, Ariz. Evidently this noble individual allowed himself to be stung by more than 78 species of insects in order to develop his index.

Since I don't have anything like that degree of nobility, I'm reluctant to argue with his findings. However, I was surprised to learn that Schmidt likens bumblebees' 2.5 rating to "stepping on a hot nail." This sounds fairly painful, whereas I've never been much bothered by bumblebee stings myself.

The second most painful of those listed in the chart is the honeybee. Its 2.0 rating is "like touching a burning match," which is closer to what I've experienced from bumblebee stings.

The sweat bee gets a rating of 1: "It hurts briefly, like a spark." Both the orchard mason bee and the leaf-cutter bee get ratings of zero, "a mild pinprick" and "like lightly brushing a thorn," respectively.

I encourage you to read the full article. But if you'd like to see what I've written about bee gardening, check "Attracting Bumblebees" and other posts listed under Bees in the right-hand column.

Catching Up

Above: A sunflower volunteered among my monkshoods last year. These small sunflowers pop up all over the place because I use the seeds in my feeders, and the birds and squirrels spread them all around. Both sunflowers and monkshoods (Aconitum spp.) are excellent bee plants.

I HAVEN'T BEEN POSTING AS OFTEN AS I'D LIKE to this blog. Partly it's because, after an unusually cool, rainy spring and early summer, we are now having warmer temperatures and high humidity. I have trouble sleeping in warm weather, to say nothing of nights like last night--when, honestly, my sheets felt as though I had washed them and forgot to put them through the drier. This leaves me lazy and more than a little dazed during the day.

The effect on the garden has been, first, to create an explosion of weeds. Areas that I weeded a few weeks ago are already getting weedy again. Even mulch, my standby both for holding back weeds and for retaining moisture in the soil, doesn't seem to be doing a particularly good job on the weed front this year: The weeds are either coming up through it or seeding themselves into it. Meanwhile, however, growth in the vegetable garden has been stunted. One crop of spinach stayed small and yellowish; then on the first day that we had any sun, it all went to seed. Another crop, planted earlier in the season, did deliver one big bag of large, edible leaves. But I'm going to have to try to plant a fall crop if I want to get anything for the freezer. The cherry tomato plants are all quite small, and I don't hold out much hope for a big crop even though, in general, cherry tomato plants are a lot more reliable than the regular varieties. The scarlet runner beans, which I plant more for the hummingbirds than for food, are also stunted: They've grown only about a foot and a half, and hardly deserve the name "runner" at all!

The only annual plants that look as though they might still be a success story are the sunflowers. I plant a variety of these every year for the bees and the birds, and because I love to watch them grow. in addition, I put black oil sunflower seeds in my feeders, and so a certain number of seeds are spread about by birds and squirrels. About a week or so ago, the sunflowers I planted finally seemed to take off.

Though I seem to be falling into a summer doldrum, I do have a list of topics I want to write about soon. With luck I will be inspired by the sunflowers, and find some new energy as we move into late summer.

Farming for Pollinators part two

FOR THE LAST INSTALLMENT HONORING NATIONAL POLLINATORS WEEK, here are some tips that were intended for farmers who want to encourage native bees to pollinate their crops. (If you're wondering why this is important, see part one.) These tips are just as helpful for gardeners who just want to help our native pollinators, however. The following come from Farming for Pollinators: Native Bees and Your Crops, published by the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Xerces Society; the comments in parentheses are from me:

Bees need lots of flowering plants throughout the flowering season. To help meet this need:

• Plant flowers, especially "old-fashioned" varieties. (This is a great thing to do in the vegetable garden. Many annuals, such as marigolds, nasturtiums, and cosmos, coexist beautifully with vegetables.)
• Plant an herb garden.
• Let an area of your property "go wild," so that wildflowers can grow.
• Let some of the leafy vegetables in your vegetable garden, such as lettuce, "bolt" (that is, make flowers and then set seed).
• Mark the edges of your property or divide areas of your property with hedgerows composed of a mixture of shrubs or trees that bloom at different times. (A hedgerow is a wildlife-friendly version of a hedge.)
• When planting windbreaks, use a variety of plants that bloom at different times.
• Use cover crops in the vegetable garden, and allow them to bloom.

Bees also need places to nest. Solitary bees (bees that do not live in colonies as honeybees do) generally nest in tunnels. These tunnels may be constructed in bare ground, but some bees use tunnels made by beetles in trees. Social bees such as bumblebees, which do nest in colonies, often make use of small holes such as abandoned rodent nests. To help meet these needs:

• Try to keep tilling to a minimum. Many native bees nest underground, sometimes at the base of plants they pollinate, and tilling would destroy their nests. Turn soil only when necessary. (I don't till at all--I use raised beds that I weed and mulch by hand. Of course, this might not be practical for someone trying to raise food commercially.)
• Drill holes into pieces of wood to make artificial nests for bees that use tunnels in wood. (The National Wildlife Federation has instructions on how to make nest boxes for orchard mason bees. These can also be purchased.)
• If possible, leave dead or dying trees standing so they can be used as nest sites by bees. (If a dying tree is a danger, consider cutting it to a safe height instead of removing it altogether. The stump will be good habitat for bees and other animals, and makes a great place to grow vines.)

Bees also need to be protected from pesticides. (Fortunately, most wildlife-friendly gardeners avoid using pesticides, and one of the advantages of buying from local farmers is that many of them are organic or moving in that direction. The booklet does give suggestions for how to minimize the impact on bees if pesticides must be used.)

Finally, it's important to try to protect good habitat areas for bees, both on the farm and in our gardens. These include:

• Anywhere that native bees already seem to be nesting and/or foraging.
• Areas near ponds, wetlands, and streams. Willows, which are often found growing in these areas, are especially good sources of pollen for bees.
• Areas of fallow or "unproductive" land.
• Patches of wildflowers.
• Hedgerows and windbreaks.
• Vegetable, flower, and herb gardens.
• Piles of loose soil. (Many people have discovered bees nesting in their compost pile. This is only a one-year problem, however, as the colony will die come winter.)
• Areas next to fields and roads.
• Almost any natural or undeveloped area.

For additional information on farming for pollinators, see the Xerces Society's booklet Farming for Bees: Guidelines for Providing Native Bee Habitat on Farms. This publication is quite detailed and contains interesting case studies.

Meet the Natives: Bleeding Heart

THE NATIVE BLEEDING HEARTS ARE UNASSUMING COUNTRY COUSINS to the common garden bleeding heart, Dicentra spectabilis. The latter, which is native to Eastern Asia, grows far larger than the natives and has been popular with gardeners going back to the mid-19th century in Europe and for hundreds of years in China and Japan.

The smaller, native Dicentras are equally charming once you get to know them. These members of the Fumitory family (which also includes Corydalis spp.) are low growing, with delicate, fernlike foliage and a tendency to naturalize. The petals fuse into interesting shapes, typically pink (sometimes white) hearts with the stamens forming a teardrop beneath--hence the common name bleeding heart. They usually flower in spring and tend to be popular with bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. In my experience the Dicentras also get along famously with other plants; see how, in the photo at top, the little bleeding heart is cozying right up to the native strawberry, with its grey-green ferny foliage setting off the brighter green and solid leaves of the Fragaria.

The photo at top mostly likely shows D. formosa, or Pacific bleeding heart. This plant was given to me by a neighbor, who dug it up in a relative's garden. If it's what I think it is, it's native to the West Coast, and has probably reached me here in the Northeast by the grace of many generations of gardeners who have passed it from one garden to another all across the continent.

Technically, this plant isn't native here. But I'm willing to overlook that because it's not particularly invasive and I have such pleasant memories of growing it in the West. The photo to the left shows a scene from a garden I designed and installed with my friend Brett Johnson; we called this area the "hummingbird glen" because we filled it with plants that appeal to hummingbirds, including D. formosa. The greenery immediately surrounding the bench consists almost entirely of a combination of native ferns with native bleeding hearts. (A photo of this same scene appeared with this article in the Seattle Times.) D. formosa has become quite popular in the nursery trade, and several cultivars are available. "Alba" has pure white flowers, and there are also several that have dark reddish pink blooms.

Warning: According to the Native Plant Information Network at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, all parts of this plant are toxic. The website states that the plant causes minor skin irritation when touched, but considerably more severe symptoms with greater exposure. Now, I've worked with this plant for years and have never noticed any symptoms whatever. But proceed with caution.

The photo at the top of this entry also could be D. canadensis, which possesses the oddball common name of "squirrel corn," presumably because of the yellow, pealike, tuberous roots. This plant has white to pale pink flowers and is native in Ontario and Quebec in Canada and in the United States from Maine to Virginia and as far west as Wisconsin. It is also said to be fragrant (which is one of the reasons why I think the plant in my garden must be D. formosa).

Another of the great native bleeding hearts--and a slightly unusual one--is D. cucullaria, which has white and yellow blooms that are shaped not like hearts but like upside-down pantaloons. Hence the common name, Dutchman's breeches. Apparently, the flowers of D. cucullaria are quite variable, however, and so the plant can often look a lot like D. canadensis, to which it is very closely related. However, D. cucullaria is not fragrant. This is the only Dicentra that is actually native where I live (insert sad face here), being native to the Maritimes as well as Ontario and Quebec in Canada, and all the way from Maine to Washington down to Tennessee in the United States. Western populations of the plant have apparently been separated from the eastern populations for at least 1,000 years, so there are physical differences between plants from the West Coast and those from the East, and some botanists regard them as different species.

Finally, D. eximia aka wild bleeding heart or plumy bleeding heart or eastern bleeding heart has small, deep pink heart-shaped flowers and is found "along the Appalachians from North Carolina and Tennessee to Maryland and Pennsylvania" according to the Flora of North America. This reference goes on to report that wild bleeding heart is frequently used in gardens and sometimes escapes outside the area to which it is native, but evidently has not become truly naturalized beyond it. Patented hybrids of D. eximia and D. formosa can be found in nurseries. The Native Plant Information Network at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center praises it as a garden plant because it has a long blooming season but warns that it can spread so profusely that it will smother other plants.

Give the Dicentras part shade (high shade or dappled shade is ideal), rich soil, and moisture, and then stand back and be prepared to watch them spread. You can usually extend the bloom time by providing supplemental water, but this is not necessary as the plants will simply go dormant if not watered.

Native Americans used this plant medicinally.

Meet the Natives: Solomon's Seal

IT'S ARCHITECTURE. Sure, most of the reference books refer to the flowers of Solomon's seal as "showy." And these clusters of large, pendulous blooms certainly are showy according to the understated aesthetics of a natural landscape. But let's face it: Greenish white flowers bordered with, um, more green are not what a lot of gardeners would consider showy.

Nevertheless, Solomon's seal should recommend itself to even the most drama-loving gardeners: Its greatest strength is its all-but architectural presence. The high-arching stems reach 5 feet under the right circumstances; the large, tapering leaves, with their strong whitish veins, are attached to these stems in a fashion that reminds one of bamboo; when they fall they leave a distinctive scar that is probably the reason the plant is called Solomon's seal. And the flowers, well the flowers are just the icing on the cake, drawing attention to the arching stems by dangling beneath them in clusters of white (ok, greenish white) bells. Whether the blooms are showy is subject to debate, but I doubt anyone would deny that this plant is dramatic.

A member of the lily family, the native Solomon's seal comes in two species, which are virtually identical in appearance: Polygonatum biflorum, smooth Solomon's seal, is native to the eastern United States and south central Canada. P. pubescens, hairy Solomon's seal, is native from Nova Scotia to Ontario in Canada and south to Georgia and Iowa.

The plant blooms in spring, with the flowers attracting both butterflies and bees. The flowers are pollinated by bees that have mastered the trick of vibrating the blooms in order to release their pollen. The blooms are followed by black, blue, or green berries that are attractive to birds, although they are mildly toxic to humans.

Aside from the berries, which should be avoided, many parts of this plant are edible. Young shoots and leaves can be boiled for 10 minutes and eaten like asparagus; the roots can be dried and ground into flour or boiled for 20 minutes and eaten like potatoes. Native Americans valued the plant for both culinary and medicinal purposes.

Solomon's seal is adapted to woodland settings, where its tendency to shoot up and arch over other plants makes it a perfect backdrop or accompaniment to smaller woodland wildflowers. It's highly adaptable and should naturalize well in almost any shady, moist spot, preferably one with humusy soil.

It also makes a phenomenal container plant, as I discovered recently after planting a clump in a pot on my deck. Planted in a big pot full of straight compost and getting a couple of hours of full sun every day, this clump shot up to to nearly 3 feet in a matter of weeks and proceeded to bloom with abandon. (You can see the original planting in this entry from May 20.) Because it does tend to grow straight up and then arch, it makes an superb structural element for a container planting that includes other, shorter woodland plants. Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck getting a photo that would do this plant justice, but here's one that at least may give some sense of how tall it has grown: You can see that the stems are now taller than the deck railing. And it's still growing!

Meet the Natives: Wild Bergamot

UNLESS YOU LOATHE LAVENDER, it's hard to imagine a better all-around plant than wild bergamot, Monarda fistulosa. This easy-to-grow member of the mint family is known as Oswego tea because the fragrant, grey-green foliage does indeed make a nice tea. It can also be used in salads or added to bathwater. The showy, pale lavender (sometimes pink or white) blooms will grace your garden all summer if dead-headed, and are very popular with pollinators. And it is said to be deer resistant.

Wild bergamot is native to most of the United States (but not Florida, Washington, California, and Nevada) and to southern Canada, though not to the Maritime provinces. Because it has adapted to such a wide range of conditions, it's best to grow yours from seeds or cuttings obtained locally, as those will be more likely to thrive in your area. It is considered hardy in zones 3-9.

The plant's flowers attract hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, and also some moths. The photo above shows a hummingbird moth that visited my wild bergamot almost daily last summer. It's probably designed to be pollinated by species of bees that have long tongues (the better to reach in to those tubular flowers), including several varieties of bumblebees.

The plants grow anywhere from two to five feet tall and will spread both by rhizomes, especially in soft soils, and by seed. However, in my experience wild bergamot is nowhere near as spready as most other mints. Thus far mine has spread just enough to provide a continuous supply of cuttings for me to press upon fellow gardeners, but nowhere near enough to be a problem. When I do have extras, I find that they're great for out-of-the-way corners where I want something attractive to out-compete the weeds.

The plant is happiest in full sun but tolerates part shade. It likes moist soil but is more tolerant of drought than the more common garden bee balm (M. didyma) is. It tolerates fairly poor, heavy soil and will spread less aggessively that way. Plan to divide it every two or three years, as you would most perennials. Give it good air circulation in order to prevent powdery mildew, but if it does get mildew don't worry as the plant will almost certainly survive.

This plant was popular with Native Americans, who used it for a variety of medicinal and culinary purposes.

Good Bee Sites

I JUST LEARNED ABOUT A COUPLE OF EXCELLENT WEBSITES DEVOTED TO BEES:

• The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service offers a page devoted to native bees as alternative pollinators. Did you know that there are more than 3,500 species of solitary bees in North America? Only a few species have been studied. "The best way to preserve bees and continue to gain from their pollination services is to preserve wildland," according to this site. However, they also offer an extensive table of plants they recommend for native bees. This website also offers information on a wide range of other topics related to sustainable agriculture.
• Discover Life is another great website, with scientific information on almost every living thing you can imagine. There is an extensive section on the Apoidea, which includes both bees and sphecid wasps, a type of wasp that is harmless to people.

Incidentally, I found out about these sites through an email list run by an organization called the Wild Ones. This excellent organization is devoted to promoting natural landscaping based on local ecologies, but at present the membership is primarily in the Midwest and Northeast of the United States. (They have chapters in Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and one that is starting up in Maine.) As it happens, the Wild Ones Journal recently published a superb cover article about bumblebees by journal editor Maryann Whitman. Any bumblebee lover will want to read this!

Native Wildflowers That Attract Pollinators

Native Pollinator Plants

HERE'S AN OFFERING that will, I hope, set to rest any doubts about whether native plants can be as beautiful as any non-native gardening favorites. (Click on the photo to be taken to a web album. If you're using tabbed browsing, hold down the Ctrl key to load the album on a different tab.) True, natives may be less showy than some of the hybrids and cultivars found in garden centers, but it doesn't take much effort to learn to appreciate their slightly more subtle charms.

This gallery focuses on plants that are native to the West, where I lived from 1993 to 2002. But if you don't live in the West, I think you may still find the gallery interesting. Several of the plants are native to much of North America, and several are representatives of species that are found almost everywhere. In addition, I've included captions discussing the characteristics of these plants that are attractive to specific types of pollinators.

A Plant for Bumblebees

I FOUND A TROVE OF FLOWER PHOTOS today, including quite a few shots of plants that appeal to pollinators. For example, the photo above shows a monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus, that is native all up and down the Pacific Northwest Coast and has naturalized in many other parts of the world. This wetland wildflower is adapted for pollination by insects, especially bumblebees: Note that the lower petals have evolved into a sturdy "lip" that will support a fairly heavy insect when it lands. The dots that lead down the throat of the plant are called nectar guides because they quite literally guide the bee to where the nectar is. When the bee puts its head into the flower in search of nectar, it will become covered in pollen that it will transfer to another plant.

Yellow Monkeyflower is one of North America's most charming wildflowers, perfect for wet areas in the garden. When happy it spreads aggressively and flowers profusely.

Bumblebees Part 3: Attracting Bumblebees

Note to readers: I apologize for the long wait between installments in this series. My modem died early Monday morning and was not replaced until yesterday. For previous installments in this series please see The Funny Fuzzy Bumblebee, Bumblebee Lives, and Bumblebee Watching.

BUMBLEBEES WILL VISIT almost any nectar-producing plant. If you have a butterfly, hummingbird, or herb garden you almost certainly will see bumblebees as well. Of course, it’s essential that the garden be pesticide-free!

Bear in mind that “old-fashioned” and wild varieties of plants are often better nectar-producers than modern hybrids. Herbaceous plants that have a reputation for being especially attractive to bumblebees include monkshood (caution: this plant is poisonous), red clover, asters, goldenrod, foxglove, germander, Joe pye weed, sedum “Autumn joy,” oregano, thyme, globe-thistle, hyssop, lavender, chives, penstemons, rosemary, and sunflowers. I especially urge you to try the North American native fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) and marsh marigold (Caltha palustris). It's quite likely that you can also find native species of goldenrod (Solidago spp.), asters (Aster spp.), penstemons (Penstemon spp.), or monkshoods (Aconitum spp.).

Shrubs and small trees that attract bumblebees reportedly include blackberry, blueberry, gooseberry, huckleberry, raspberry, wild rose, spirea, willow, serviceberry, cherry, crabapple, and rhododendron. Native willows (Salix spp.) are important for queen bumblebees early in the season, as they are among the first plants to produce abundant pollen.

To provide good habitat for bumblebees, don’t make your flower garden or the area around it too tidy. If the queens are to find spots where they can build hibernacula and nests, you’ll have to leave “natural” areas full of shrubs and groundcovers, brush piles, areas of unmowed grass, and patches of bare, soft earth. You’ll also want to tolerate and even learn to enjoy native species of mice, keeping in mind that they (like all native wildlife) have an important role to play in nature’s great comedy-drama.

This series of posts on bumblebees is taken from an article I originally wrote for Northwest Garden News.