Spring Beauties: Bee + Bloom

I usually use the ol’ Monarch butterfly example to talk to beginners about “host” plants and “specialization,” which can illustrate “Why Native Matters.”

But right now, in lucky lawns all over town, there buzzes another great example: the Spring Beauty bee.

Monarchs can’t raise babies on anything but Milkweed, right?
Well, Spring Beauty bees can’t raise babies without Spring Beauty pollen.

Spring Beauty is Claytonia virginica, a not-common-enough “common” wildflower in Nashville.
And Spring Beauty bees are Andrena erigeniae, a native mining bee.

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Foundation Shrubs that Feed Nature, not Fight it

Skip the Skip Laurel, Say No to Nandina: Choose NATIVE

If your exotic evergreens are “ever-brown” from the recent freeze, now is an ideal time to upgrade to natives.

It doesn’t make sense to simply plant more of the same: the same non-native foundation shrubs that are anything but foundational to our ecosystem. Schip laurel, boxwood, nandina, Chinese holly, euonymus, false cypress, red-tips, cryptomeria, and so forth: all are plants that evolved with creatures and conditions on different continents.

^{[Mockingbird on Black Chokeberry, Photo by Richard Hitt]}

What we need in Tennessee are more shrubs that evolved nearby.
Native shrubs can be more likely to survive extreme weather, year-round. And most importantly, natives are the only sustainable choice: they contribute to local foodwebs in countless, critical ways that non-native plants cannot.

But, which native shrubs give us the color, texture, and size we want, while giving birds, bees, and butterflies what they need?

^{Eastern Red-cedar, female with “berries”}

-WHAT TO BUY:

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a National Native Plant Month!

Here are my favorite “Whereas” statements in the new, bipartisan Resolution that just days ago declared April to be “National Native Plant Month:”

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Sidewalk Nature: milkweed vine

On the Secret Path today:

When a climbing vine casts its tip out and out but finds nothing to grab, it will curve round and grab itself.

That’s what’s happened here. You can see the loop at the bottom of the photo, and how it continues as a younger, greener “switchback” still counter-clockwising up its earlier self.
The vine’s goal is to aim for sunlight by the most expedient means, which in this case is its own body. Continue reading “Sidewalk Nature: milkweed vine” →