Pollinator-Friendly Native Plant Lists | Hacker News Reader

Pollinator-Friendly Native Plant Lists

xerces.org

188 pointsAmorymeltzer45 comments

This is a great resource if you're in the U.S., thank you! Be sure to look up your local native plant societies if you need more help, they're a great resource and can often find you cheap seeds or young plants. In Georgia we have the Georgia Native Plant Society (https://gnps.org/) and in Texas the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center can help you (https://www.wildflower.org/). Find and support your local native plant people!

I had native plants in the gardens of my house I listed for sale (before things ground to a halt, alas). The real estate agents wanted then all replaced by "more attractive" plants that need more water. Sigh.

You don't have to follow their `advice`, and most who want such plants would plant the ones they want anyhow and those who like native plants would be a plus point sales wise. So you may find the effort and expense would not yield much of a return and may be detrimental profit wise.

Saying that as I'm not aware of anybody who was put off a house sale as they didn't like the plants, though aware of many who would landscape/redo the garden to their taste irrespective of what's there and the only thing that may have merit would be a tree or bushes that would factor in some buyers, not the plants. Unless of course it's something like knotweed.

Did you consult with other agents?

Yes interviewed several. The thing about the Californian plants is that they are very low water users, but as a result the plants look patchy and so, to those with a European or Asian conception of what "plants" should look like, can appear a bit bedraggled. It's all about people imagining themselves in the house.

FWIW, adding some hardscaping (rocks, boulders, cement pavers) and vertical changes (dry creek, small hills with dirt from the dry creek) made my xeriscape look 100x more interesting. There's a sweat equity cost and hardscaping can get expensive quickly, but your payoff is likely a big increase in curb appeal.

That is some solid advice, large stone's will shield and help reduce evaporation as well. Though way things are going, the whole housing market is getting put on pause, bit by bit and at least in the UK - mortgage lenders are withdrawing loan deals and now only doing mortgages with min 25% equity/deposit. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52106119

So it does seem like even if there isn't some housing crash/slide, the banks are ontrack to induce one.

Hence your advice, might well be a case of having the time and as you say the curb factor to get it thru.

Personally, I dunno if i'd look at a quick sale for lesser or hold out, certainly some interesting times we live in.

xeriscape ... great word! In Australia local government in some areas are pushing 'rain gardens' and 'swales'. Some even pay out lump sum subsidies, to reduce sudden stormwater runoff.

Australia has some incredible shrubs and trees that are wonderful additions to a xeriscape. I've got a yard with mostly native southwest US plants & cacti but I sprinkled in a couple exotics from down under.

There are CA natives that don’t look bedraggled - manzanitas, ceanothus, ribes species, etc.

Very pleasant to see, elegant and informative

Extra point for writing Symphyotrichum instead Aster. This means that there is a serious taxonomic work in the background (and they cared to update the scientific names and include the modern changes based in DNA studies).

The title could benefit of an "in North America"

Gorgeous PDFs! Very informative and easy to read too.

I wish there was a similar thing for my country far away. If there is, I'm missing it. Most books about 'native' plants are about wild flowers, and most books about garden plants don't say what is native and are full of types which clearly aren't.

And yeah, I've planted a lot of buddleia, which I've since learned is an invasive species where I am.

If you are in to plants, I can strongly recommend installing the http://inaturalist.org/ app. Great community any ML based identifications, providing open citizen science data to researchers and objective collated data such as range, seasonality, etc. per species.

Australia: Shots of ants pollinating a native tea tree I took recently: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40225415 + somewhat dated but broad scientific review of Australian pollinators: https://moscow.sci-hub.tw/3455/c6d90a9c9485aa772e97f4c6932cc... + upcoming April 12-19 wild pollinator count event https://wildpollinatorcount.com/

I've had a lot of fun this year keeping mason bees (native bees). They're solitary and extremely docile (I've messed with their comb homes a lot and they've never minded). They're also extremely good pollinators, much better than honey bees.

After an unsuccessful attempt to use a mason bee hive from Costco, I ripped it out and inserted 3D printed equivalents, which they seem to be more interested in. It's also fun that I get to disassemble the nest and double my brood for next year.

As for the garden, it's hard to determine causation, but I've noticed a much better yield on my stone fruits.

I highly recommend mason bees in your garden next year. They're easy, low maintenance, and kids can get into keeping them.

Not to be "that guy" but I have to point out that, while this is great, the primary threat to pollinators is our modern mass agriculture.

Replacing monoculture, pesticide ridden lawns with more natural coverings(especially in places where no one is even using the lawn for recreation) is a good first step. Then at least the cities and suburbs can be a haven. It also gets people thinking about this kind of stuff and can lead to pressure for more sustainable agriculture.

Oh absolutely! Have you heard of "Integral Urban House"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Urban_House

This sounds like it’s related to permaculture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

This particular thing was (I think) a parallel evolution.

Very cool! The numbering in the bloom periods for California [0] is missing 17-20: it goes "16, 21, 22, 23 … 24". The pictures look to be numbered correctly though.

[0]: https://xerces.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/17-045_02_Xer...

Here's another resource from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which includes a couple places not found in the linked site: https://www.fws.gov/pollinators/

Only talks about North America.

There are links to sites for several other countries

This is well put together. The PDF has a single page ordered by bloom time within the season. For each plant, it lists the water requirements and rough height: this quickly lets me know whether a plant will fit in a particular location in my yard. Otherwise I go looking for plants, find what seems to be nice then after digging up the details find out it doesn't match the location.

These PDFs are sorted by US region but for those outside the US, this may still be useful if your local climate happens to be close to one of the 10 listed here.

> These PDFs are sorted by US region but for those outside the US, this may still be useful if your local climate happens to be close to one of the 10 listed here.

Possibly, but seems like it would still be best to determine what's native for your region, not just plant something because it can survive.

Looking for similar resources for Europe in general and Scandinavia in particular. Anyone know of something similar?

Salix can be a start. You have several dwarf or small species. Salix lanata for example.

Rhododendron tomentosum also

Describe your location. What kind of garden do you want to create?

There are some links for other countries under "Additional Resources" at the bottom of the page.

Most countries have online flora's and at lasses like https://www.ala.org.au/ (Atlas of live Australia). What is often missing is nice presentations and use case specific applications like this.

Does North America have that many pollinator insects in terms of population? We have some butterflies and some solitary bees. We don't have the honey bee. What would normally be pollinating these plants, all I see is honey bees and some butterflies.

I'm not sure about number of pollinator insects in terms of population, but in the southeast for example, the southeastern blueberry bee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habropoda_laboriosa) pollinates blueberries through buzz pollination. I believe even commercial blueberry operations rely on this pollinator, as blueberries are native to North America and those bees are its primary pollinators.

Wasps are pollinators, too. Many, especially among the prolific polistids, are obligate nectar feeders as adults, hunting only to feed or otherwise provision their larvae. Their typically scanty pubescence makes them less efficient pollinators than bees when taken one by each, but in the aggregate they're critical nonetheless.

Hope they include milkweed on the lists for endangered Monarchs.

https://monarchbutterflygarden.net/how-to-start-monarch-butt...

Anything that flowers produces pollen right - so hmm.

However, I always like to have a patch of wild flowers (localy sourced previous year for seed) in along with chives and lavander. Look nice and just before the lockdown I went out and sowed some in a few spots along with some sunflowers.

Logic being that they will bloom around the time everybody really down from the lockdown and help chirp up people, also good for nature and birds love sunflower seed. Which is one thing I feed them regularly with my window feeder and been a joy over the past few weeks and months ahead.

You can make a window bird feeder with some perspex or even cut and glue up some milk containers - few suction cups and tada, simple and effective little bird feeder and they do use them and who needs 4k/8k.. when you have real life out a window comming to you. Highly recommended.

> Anything that flowers produces pollen right - so hmm.

Technically, that may be right but is beyond the point. Very often, for alien species the local pollinators will not recognize the plant as such and thus ignore it. A prime example for this is Forsythia that a lot of people in my area plant because its one of the first flowering trees in the year. However, from an ecological standpoint it is worthless and for some insects even suspected to be toxic.

Another problem are breeds where the blossom is filled with extra petals. While this may look nice to us, it makes the pollen and nectar inaccessible to many insects. As they are still drawn to the flower but cannot reach it, its also net negative for those critters.

Fascinating, I did not know that, do now - thank you.

I use local wildflower seed harvested from walks the previous year, though mostly from previous years sowings now as got some momentum going.

> Anything that flowers produces pollen right - so hmm.

Yes, but not all pollens are designed to feed insects. Yews or Cypresses release huge amounts of pollen that will paint a car in yellow, but will not attract pollinators.

Ah yes, those are wind pollinating plants, well tree's.

Would also explain the volume of pollen over normal insect pollinated plants. Thank you for that though, I did overlook those type of pollinated plants. Though I'm not aware of any flowers that are wind pollinated, though I'm sure their will be some as every rule has an exception I've found.

The thing is, pollinators have to eat all year. You get more bang for your buck by planting things with long or repeated flowering intervals, or things that bloom at odd times. I've seen rosemary flower 3 times in one year due to sustained rainy periods.

And then there are predator species that need certain flowers for forage or shelter during some part of their lifecycle, like lady beetles or some predatory wasps with yarrow (a common volunteer plant in NA)

It really bugs me when people put stuff on the Internet like this, an International network of often English speaking people many of whom don't live in the USA. It happens all the time. "Series X to be releaesd next month", "Hardware y to be releaesd on Monday", as if they have suddenly forgotten that there's an entire rest of the world who may be reading this.

It gets worse - "X to be released this fall". When exactly?

Are there many places outside the US that use ‘fall’ over ‘autumn’?

https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/conservation-biodiversity/wil...

Royal Horticultural Society UK Garden & Wild plants for pollinators by month.

They have California, Florida, and the rest are just regional pamphlets.

California is big enough and isolated enough by mountains to be considered a distinct region. Florida is different enough to be considered distinct from the rest of the south. Nature doesn't care about state borders. Regional pamphlets make sense.

Pollinator-Friendly Native Plant Lists in the USA, there FTFY.

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