Looking at bumble bee midsections and butts can help you ID the bees in your landscape!
Category: Beneficial Insects
Eryngium planum – Sea Holly
Happy Pollinator Week! What an amazing time to celebrate pollinators. We know that insects play a vital role in our ecosystem. But did you know almost every third bite of food you take comes from a plant that has been pollinated by an insect. Wow! Pollinators are out and about all season long from early…
The Paradoxical Echinacea
You’re probably familiar with the purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea. It’s a beautiful native plant that is often plagued with an incurable disease known as aster yellows. If you’re fed up with digging out and discarding your purple coneflowers for this reason, try its cousin, the Ozark coneflower, Echinacea paradoxa. The “paradox” owes to the flower…
Ornamental Onion, Allium christophii
Nothing beats the “wow!” power of the ornamental onions for sheer showiness. Pollinators would agree because ornamental onions are magnets for bees, bumble bees and butterflies! Allium christophii, sometimes called Star of Persia, has 1 inch star-like metallic purple flowers, combined into one large cluster 6 inches across. This ornamental onion has 18 inch…