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Pollination Fast Facts: Gardeners

What is pollination?
• Pollination occurs when pollen grains are moved between two flowers of the same species, or within a single flower, by wind or animals that are pollinators. Successful pollination, which may require visits by multiple pollinators to a single flower, results in healthy fruit and fertile seeds, allowing plants to reproduce. Without pollinators, we simply wouldn’t have many crops!

• About 75% of all flowering plants rely on animal pollinators and over 200,000 species of animals act as pollinators. Of those, about 1,000 are hummingbirds, bats, and small mammals. The rest are insects such as beetles, flies, bees, ants, wasps, butterflies, and moths.
Why are pollinators important to us?
• Worldwide, approximately 1,000 plants grown for food, beverages, fibers, spices, and medicines need to be pollinated by animals in order to produce the goods on which we depend.

• Foods and beverages produced with the help of pollinators include blueberries, chocolate, coffee, melons, peaches, pumpkins, vanilla, and almonds. Plants that depend on a single pollinator species, and likewise, pollinators that depend on a single type of plant for food are interdependent. If one disappears, so will the other.

What about bees that sting? What about allergies?
• Most species of bees don’t sting. Although all female bees are physically capable of stinging, most bee species native to the U.S. are “solitary bees,” that is, not living in colonies and don’t sting unless they are physically threatened or injured. Only honey bees are defensive and may chase someone who disturbs their hive.
• It is wise, though, to avoid disturbing any bee or insect nest. For instance, if you spot an underground nest of ground-nesting bees, you might want to mark it with a stick so that it can be easily avoided.
• Some people are allergic to pollen of various flowering trees, plants and grasses, but not to all pollen. A common misunderstanding is that hay fever is caused by goldenrod pollen. It isn’t! Ragweed is the main offender and should be avoided.
Pollinator Partnership 600 Montgomery Street, STE 440 San Francisco, CA 94111 415-362-1137

Ways You Can Help!
What everyone can do for pollinators:
• Watch for pollinators. Get connected with nature. Take a walk, experience the landscape and look for pollinators’ midday in sunny, planted areas.
• Reduce your impact. Reduce or eliminate your pesticide use, increase green spaces, and minimize urbanization. Pollution and climate change affect pollinators, too!
• Plant for pollinators. Create pollinator-friendly habitat with native flowering plants that supply pollinators with nectar, pollen, and homes.

What you can do for pollinators:
• Create a pollinator-friendly garden habitat in just a few simple steps.
• Design your garden so that there is a continuous succession of plants flowering from spring through fall. Check for the species or cultivars best suited to your area and gradually replace lawn grass with flower beds.
• Plant native to your region using plants that provide nectar for adults plus food for insect larvae, such as milkweed for monarchs. If you do use non-native plants, choose ones that don’t spread easily, since these could become invasive.
• Select old-fashioned varieties of flowers whenever possible because breeding has caused some modern blooms to lose their fragrance and/or the nectar/pollen needed to attract and feed pollinators.
• Install ‘houses’ for bats and native bees. For example, use wood blocks with holes or small open patches of mud. As little as 12” across is sufficient for some bees.
• Avoid pesticides, even so-called “natural” ones such as Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). If you must use them, use the most selective and least toxic ones and apply them at night when most pollinators aren’t active.
• Supply water for all wildlife. A dripping faucet or a suspended milk carton with a pinhole in the bottom is sufficient for some insects. Other wildlife need a small container of water.

• Provide water for butterflies without letting it become a mosquito breeding area. Refill containers daily or bury a shallow plant saucer to its rim in a sunny area, fill it with coarse pine bark or stones and fill to overflowing with water.
• Share fun facts, such as: a tiny fly (a “midge”) no bigger than a pinhead is responsible for the world’s supply of chocolate; or one out of every three mouthfuls of food we eat is delivered to us by pollinators.
Pollinator Partnership 600 Montgomery Street, STE 440 San Francisco, CA 94111 415-362-1137

Eastern Tiger Swallowtails

When you see a large, showy butterfly flitting around your garden, a roadside, fields or woodsd, take a closer look. It may be an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail(Papilio glaucus), which is a native in eastern North America.  It’s at home in Florida, except the Florida Keys.  

From February to November, these butterflies feed on nectar from sturdy plants, particularly those that have “red or pink” flowers.  Look for adults with a wing span of 3.1 to 5.5 inches. Males are yellow with four black stripes on their forewings.  Females may be yellow or black.   The yellow females have a band of blue spots along their hind wings.  Black females do not have distinguishing markings, they are just dark. 

These dark females may be a species preservation mechanism as some predators will avoid them, thinking they are another form of swallowtail that is poisonous.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail – Yellow

Adult Eastern Tiger Swallowtails live about a month.  They are loners and are frequently observed flying above the tree tops.   Males pursue females by frequenting areas that contain the kinds of  plants on which females prefer to lay their eggs.  To attract or tempt the females, the males  release a pheromone that encourages mating.  While courting, the butterflies engage in a ritual mating dance, fluttering their wings around each other before they land and mate.

Two to three broods may be produced each year in our area.  Trees and shrubs of the Magnoliaceae (magnolia) and  Rosaceae plant families are the favorite host plants on which the females lay their green eggs. 

As the young caterpillars develop, they are brown and white.  Then change to green with black, yellow and blue spots on the thorax. The caterpillar then goes into a resting stage, forming a chrysalis from which the butterfly will emerge