Fortunately P2 has complied planting guides that helps you select the right plant for the right spot [ 20 ]. Plant the right plants on highway rights of ways, farms, schools, home gardens, corporate landscapes and on public spaces. It really will matter for all of us. Pollinator Week days. Donate Now. Toggle navigation.
Who We Are. Home About Pollinators. Toggle navigation Jump to:. Pollinators need you. You need pollinators. What is pollination? Some of the many foods that rely on pollinators.
Worldwide, over half the diet of fats and oils comes from crops pollinated by animals. You can make a positive difference in your home environment. Provide a diverse assortment of flowering plants and encourage native species in your landscape. Use pesticides only when necessary and then only late in the day or evening. Look for alternative ways to deal with pest and disease issues before reaching for a quick fix. These often come at a price.
The actions you take in and around your garden can either help reduce or promote the population of pollinators in your landscape. Off camera, Joe dedicates his time to promoting sustainability through his popular books, blog, podcast series, and nationally syndicated newspaper columns. Follow Joe on Twitter. Hi Joe, This was super helpful and informative. I am writing a research paper for my graduate class Biodiversity and the age of technology.
I am focusing my masters thesis on Monarch Butterflies, how important pollinators are to our ecosystem, the rapid decline in population and ways we can help on local community levels to start.
I am planning to have a community engagement piece where I include my girl scouts in the process of getting some milkweed gardens going in our community Denver and maybe write a kid friendly book that educates youth on the important of pollinators. Similarly, pollinators evolved with specialized physical traits and behaviors that enhance their pollination efforts.
Each participant, plant and pollinator, usually gains a benefit from pollination. Bees: Flower nectar provides bees with the sugar to fuel their flights. The proteins and amino acids in pollen are vital nutrients needed by young bee larvae back in the next. Bees are not picky and frequently visit a large variety of flowers.
Less elegant than other pollinators, beetles blunder their way through delicate blossoms searching for food, a mate, or perhaps the bathroom. Beetles frequently visit magnolias and flowers close to the ground.
Butterflies: Butterflies often visit round flowers with flared petals that lead to narrow throats that conceal nectar. Butterflies frequently visit salvias and sunflowers.
Flies: Some flies act just like bees, visiting sweet-smelling flowers. Others have more disgusting tastes. They are attracted to flowers with putrid odors, meat-like colors, or fur-like textures that lure them in by pretending to be the fresh dung of dead animals that flies desire. Hummingbirds: The long, thin bill and tongue of a hummingbird allows it to reach the nectar hidden deeply in tubular flowers.
The Ruby-throated hummingbird is the only species that breeds on the East Coast each summer, after traveling up from Mexico and Central America. Hummingbirds frequently visit beebalm and honeysuckle. Moths: Most moths go unnoticed even though they outnumber butterflies 10 to 1.
They are often active at night and dull in appearance. Night-blooming flowers have sweet scents and white or cream colored blossoms that reflect the moonlight to attract moths after the sun sets.
Wind: Not all pollination relies on animals. Wind pollinates grains, most nuts, many trees, and the wild grasses that provide forage for livestock. The odds are small that a pollen grain will find its way to a corn silk, but each kernel of corn is a tiny fruit resulting from successful wind pollination. Pollinator populations are at risk. Decades of stressors including the loss, degradation, and fragmentation of pollinator habitats; the improper use of pesticides and herbicides; and diseases, predation, and parasites have all hurt pollinators.
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