🪻🌱🐝 💜 🌿 ✨ // violets & violet miner bees // part of my natives + pollinators series // gouache on paper
tiny violet miner bees (Andrena violae) are a specific pollinator: they pollinate wood & dog violets in the Northeast, and show a strong preference for blue violets. letting your grassy yard rewild itself and grow violets every spring not only lets you make violet syrup, it also gives violet miner bees their most important food source and increases local pollinator diversity.
Amid widespread concern about the decline of wild pollinating insects like bees and butterflies, University of Sussex researchers have discovered that moths are particularly vital pollinators for nature.
Studying 10 sites in the South East of England throughout July 2021, the Sussex researchers found that 83% of insect visits to bramble flowers were made during the day. While the moths made fewer visits during the shorter summer nights, notching up only 15% of the visits, they were able to pollinate the flowers more quickly.
As a result, the researchers concluded that moths are more efficient pollinators than day-flying insects such as bees, which are traditionally thought of as "hard-working." While day-flying insects have more time available to transfer pollen, moths were making an important contribution during the short hours of darkness.
Brazilian frog might be the first pollinating amphibian known to science
Nectar-loving tree frog likely moves pollen from flower to flower.
The creamy fruit and nectar-rich flowers of the milk fruit tree are irresistible to Xenohyla truncata, a tree frog native to Brazil.
On warm nights, the dusky-colored frogs take to the trees en masse, jostling one another for a chance to nibble the fruit and slurp the nectar. In the process, the frogs become covered in sticky pollen grains—and might inadvertently pollinate the plants, too.
It’s the first time a frog—or any amphibian—has been observed pollinating a plant, researchers reported last month in Food Webs...
Happy Pollinator week to the Baltic Isopod, the first underwater pollinator discovered by science! Lab studies imply that their activities help pollinate seagrass and macroalgea. Is there anything isopods can't do?
As a society we have done thistles so dirty. Not even pollinator-plant zealots recommend planting thistles even though pollinators go absolutely crazy over them.
I saw 2 (two) Great Spangled Fritillaries trying to cram themselves onto the same thistle flower today as well as a thistle plant with multiple American Bumblebees on it. These things are a monarch magnet too.
🌱 🐜 🪽🌿✨// white trillium & ants // gouache on hot press paper
part of my natives + pollinators series. white trillium are a delicate spring ephemeral native to the eastern US. they bloom in the early spring in woodlands, soaking up the sunlight on the forest floor for a few weeks before the canopy grows in. tiny ants help pollinate them for the 4-ish weeks they're in bloom, and spread their seeds on the forest floor.