Pollinator Visitors to Stokesia

Pollinators are drawn to bright flowers like yellow, purple, red, blue, orange, and even pink. They also love blooms that have a sweet scent and easily accessible nectar.

19 of the Best Sunflowers for Pollinators

I was first introduced to Mohr’s rosinweed on a botanizing trip to northern Alabama. It’s a true native stalwart and one of the many durable plants in the genus Silphium that are indigenous to prairies, meadows, and grasslands across the United States. These resilient members of the aster family are known to be both beautiful and extremely low maintenance in a garden setting.

Want to show a little love to your local bees with an easy-care lawn? You don’t have to keep bees to create an environment that helps them thrive. Bee lawns are a great way to improve the look and care of your yard while also helping bees.

Beetles were already pollinating the first flowers before bees evolved. Many of the flowers with an ancient lineage, including magnolia and spicebush, are beetle-pollinated, but so are many other flowers. Pawpaw, our largest native fruit, is beetle-pollinated. Beetle-pollinated flowers are often pale or dull in color, cup-shaped, and have a spicy or musky odor. Beetles are usually considered messy pollinators since they eat through flower parts as they pollinate. They are also regarded as inefficient pollinators. They feed on pollen, and as they feed, it sticks to their bodies, but since they are less hairy than other pollinators, the amount of pollen they move is less. However, astoundingly, beetles make up 40% of all known animals; by sheer numbers, they make up for this inefficiency.

Honeybees and butterflies may be the poster children for pollinator awareness, but these charismatic garden visitors actually make up a very small portion of the species that move pollen from plant to plant. Commonly overlooked creatures like wasps, flies, moths, beetles, birds, bats, and even lizards can all serve as plant pollinators. Another misconception is that most pollinator activity occurs from the height of summer and into early fall, but in fact pollination occurs during most months of the year when temperatures are within an acceptable range for insect activity and there is a pollen or nectar source available. In this article I will talk about an array of plants that feed and support pollinators at specific points throughout the growing season. As you plan your wildlife-friendly plantings, use these suggestions as a springboard for creating your own unique, multiseason plant combinations.

Feed Pollinators with These Cool-Season Plant Combinations Keep pollinators happy with these spring and fall blooming plant combinations! Grow cool-season plants for pollinators

If you’re driving along the highway in Florida sometime soon, you may find the roadside dotted with the blooms of thousands of flowers. But they aren’t just eye candy. These flowers are intended to create pollinator habitat corridors.

Choosing a palette of plants that will sustain pollinators throughout the growing season is a great start. However, the way you plant and care for your selections can provide additional advantages for the pollinators you’re seeking to attract. Here are some ways to make the lower layers of your garden even more beneficial.

As Digital Content Editor Christine Alexander explains, pollinators play a vital role in our ecosystem and we should all be doing our part to support their populations:

As Digital Content Editor Christine Alexander explains, pollinators play a vital role in our ecosystem and we should all be doing our part to support their populations:

As Digital Content Editor Christine Alexander explains, pollinators play a vital role in our ecosystem and we should all be doing our part to support their populations: