Meet the Pollinators–Eastern Carpenter Bee
The Eastern Carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica) is one of our native bees found throughout much of North America east of the Rockies. It nests in wood as semi-social colonies–not solitary, but not in large colonies like honeybees. Carpenter bees are of similar size and look superficially much like bumble bees. This bee feeds mostly on nectar and pollen. It pollinates a wide variety of fruit and vegetable crops as well as native wildflowers, like these Virginia bluebells growing in our home landscape here in the Arkansas Ozarks.
Hitched to Everything Else . . .
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. John Muir Ecology is the study of relationships—of organisms to each other and to the physical world in which they live. The great mystique of nature is in how beautifully complex these interactions are, and the wonderful surprises they bring us as we slowly uncover them. A case in point is how the re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park has caused a blossoming of nature in general within the park. Wolves were finally exterminated from Yellowstone in the 1920’s when the prevailing sentiment was that wolves are a threat to other wildlife. Deer and elk populations soon mushroomed and a new normal took over for the next seventy years. The banks of the streams and rivers began to change as the herbivores kept streamside trees and shrubs in check. Then, in 1995, wild wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone. Scientists have been tracking the profound changes to the entire ecosystem ever since. Check out this short video about how adding one key species came to change even the course of rivers and cleaned the water. What is true in wild ecosystems like Yellowstone is also true in not-so-wild ecosystems like your backyard, your farm, your local park, or natural area. We see that each native species that is added to an ecosystem is a sort of portal—an unlocked door—for another species to show up on its own, and then another. A simple wildflower can be a portal for other species in your habitat: for example, a bird, a bug, or a butterfly. Perhaps an insect that you never even noticed uses that wildflower plant in some way; and perhaps there is a bird whose favorite food is that insect; the bird is now attracted to your habitat when it wasn’t before. The new link in the food web becomes the “hitch” for yet another species, and another, and so on. Suddenly, you have a more balanced ecosystem, attracting birds naturally–rather than just because of your backyard feeder. A bird feeder by itself is the ecological equivalent of a fast-food drive-through. When you sow seeds of native plants, you add the natural “hitch” for additional species to hook up to, in the words of John Muir.
Monarch Refueling Stations
On a sunny day in early October, our place was swarming with beautiful Monarch butterflies. Of particular interest to them were the 10-ft tall clumps of Sawtooth Sunflower–towering shoots of bright yellow blossoms that serve as refueling pumps like a station off the interstate highway. That’s what fall-blooming flowers do—refuel butterflies. Monarchs fan-out and spend the summer throughout the eastern two-thirds of the United States and southern Canada. After several generations, they begin to migrate southward to the Oyamel Fir forests of mountainous Central Mexico, massing together by the millions to spend the winter months. A monarch butterfly born in the northern US or southern Canada must fly up to 2,800 miles to migrate to Michoacan, Mexico. That’s a long way for an animal that weighs an average of only one-half of a gram– half the weight of a small paper clip! A monarch butterfly is like a 4-inch-wide orange kite that must sail favorable winds when they are available. Cold days and rain will ground them. Each monarch must find their way to a specific, remote place it has never personally been–a marvel of nature right in our own backyard. For more information on monarch biology and migration, check out Monarch Joint Venture.org. Monarchs are one of just a few migratory insect species. Fall-blooming flowers are critical for the energy- rich nectar they require to continue the trip south. Holland Wildflower Farm has wildflower seed mixes specifically designed for monarch butterflies, such as our Monarch Native Wildflower Mix—a rich selection of native-only species beneficial to Monarchs. Also, our Monarch Butterfly Garden Seed Mix, a more modestly priced version which includes some garden variety flower species that they use for the nectar. A more generalized pollinator mix is our Eastern Pollinator Mix. You can do your bit to help the monarchs by planting a pollinator-friendly “refueling station” along their route.
Go Wild!
American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) is a shrub native to the Southeastern US, various Caribbean islands, and the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Lush green foliage is followed by pink flowers and gorgeous lavender-purple berries which last well into the winter, until birds and other wildlife have picked them clean. The pictured plant has been in a bed in our landscaping for several years now. Last fall an early and severe freeze killed it to the ground. But this spring, slowly but surely, it leafed back out and is now as lush as ever and blooming again. We had other shrubs—non-natives–that died back from the same freeze and never re-sprouted. The point is that plants native to your area are there for a reason. Native species have evolved over millennia to the conditions in that area. This early freeze was not American beautyberry’s first rodeo with an occasional early, or late, hard freeze. Freezes farther north from our location are too often and too severe, so Beautyberry is not native there. When you use native plants, you are hedging your bets with the tried and true. Go wild! Check out the USDA Plant database website (plants.usda.gov) for range maps and other information on a particular species or genus. You can find out exactly where a native plant is found in nature by zooming-in on the map to switch from a North American map with state ranges down to state maps which highlight at the county level. Click this link to see an example using American beautyberry. The database and range maps also include many non-native species used as landscape plants. Native plants are better adapted to bounce back from unusual weather events–and “unusual” weather appears to be the new normal.
Butterfly Desert
Several years ago, during October, I was working in a soybean field in Stuttgart, Arkansas. I walked along the edge of a mature planting of soybeans—some with dry, stems and papery pods, others with yellowing leaves. The plot was maybe ten acres, with many more acres of dry soybeans and rice in adjacent fields. The bordering field had just been “floated” with a laser-leveling rig to get it ready for planting winter wheat–another ten acres of absolutely, bare dirt. Walking along the edge of the two fields, I noticed a monarch butterfly drifting lazily through the air in the sporadic, unpredictable pattern they often fly (probably driven by chemical cues). The soybeans were ready for harvest so had no flowers. The butterfly was making its way across the barren, plowed field. A few minutes later, another Monarch floated by headed in vaguely the same southwesterly direction as the earlier one–towards Mexico, their winter destination. It occurred to me that these pretty butterflies, seemingly nonchalant in their herky-jerky flight pattern, actually were in a desperate search for food. I don’t know how far a Monarch is able to fly without re-fueling, but these little fellows were in for some slim pickin’s for quite a spell—there was not a blooming flower for hundreds of acres, as far as the eye could see. This agricultural land was a barren desert to them from a calorie standpoint, except for a weed here and there in a bar ditch along the section roads. The area used to be part of an expansive native prairie known as the Arkansas Grand Prairie. The county where it is located is called, Prairie County. That is why it is so productive for growing rice, wheat, and soybeans today. A few miles to the north is a long, narrow corridor of prairie remnant that has been set aside along US Highway 70 which runs parallel to and just south of Interstate 40. The prairie reserve is about 25 miles long, but only about 30 yards wide, between the two-lane highway and an old railroad bed. In October, the prairie remnant lights up with bright yellow blossoms of Compass Plant and Goldenrod, of Partridge Pea and Tickseed Bidens, the gray-white plumes of Boneset, and the pretty purple Ironweed. I try to imagine the sights and sounds and smells—the experience—of being in that very spot two hundred years ago. Before the European sodbusters spilled across the mighty Mississippi River from Tennessee, from Mississippi, from Alabama, to claim some of that rich prairie for themselves, plowing it under to grow cotton, the cash cow of those days. That 30-yard-wide swath is like a small museum of what was once unbroken prairie for miles and miles in every direction. This prairie is a 30-minute drive north from those butterflies I watched—and that only if you are traveling 60 miles per hour without stopping–hardly a butterfly’s style. On the one hand, agriculture has changed a lot of land from deep forest to open land, with flowers in the ditches and ecological “edges” that produce more flowers than you would see in the original dense forest. The winners there are butterflies and open-field birds. The losers are forest animals, like squirrels, bears, and turkeys. With every management or environmental shift comes a whole list of winners and losers. Just like economic shifts in human ecology—recessions, war, trade battles, energy cost spikes—there are economic winners and losers in the same sort of way. In fact, calories are to a butterfly what dollars are to a Wall Street investor. Large expanses of row crops are the caloric equivalent of an economic depression for a Monarch butterfly trying to make it to Mexico. Yes, we must grow food for us humans. But it remains true that mature crops and bare soil are a desert for a butterfly searching for sugary nectar—their fuel. The good news is that there is a movement afoot to convert some less productive agricultural land from cultivation and back into natural habitats. Such conservation restoration projects can earn carbon credits or offsets for corporations who purchase the land and who pay to seed it in prairie grasses and forbs, or plant forest trees. We see this as a win-win situation for corporations, farmers, non-profits, and the environment. Holland Wildflower Farm is excited to be a part of this noble endeavor. One last thought: we don’t have to convert thousands of acres of farmland to benefit pollinators like the migrating Monarch butterflies. Even small plantings of native wildflowers can be a lifeline. Have you ever driven on a highway only to look down at your gas gauge and see it dangerously low–and no gas station in sight, exit after exit? Even a small planting of natives can be that refueling station for a migrating monarch or other pollinator. That’s something nearly all of us can do.
