Wildflower Wednesday: Dogwood, not just a pretty flower face

It's Wildflower Wednesday and that's when I showcase my favorite wildflowers, but, today, I want to talk about my favorite flowering dogwood, Cornus florida. It plays a major supportive role in my wildflower garden all year long, as well as being a lovely Spring showoff!

Flowering dogwood is the most popular understory tree in my part of the gardening world! I have several in my front garden and my favorite grows in the shade of a Bur oak and Shagbark hickories. It has the most appealing and graceful tiered and horizontal branching and the lower limbs tickle the Golden ragwort and Mayapples growing beneath it.

I love how the lower branches brush the woodland floor

It's that graceful look that most of us want from our dogwood trees and can only get it if we leave those lower branches alone. Too often they're sited in the middle of the lawn and all the lower branches are removed for easy mowing. Leave those branches alone and let them drape across the lawn.

No scratch that! The tree would be happier to not be in the middle of a lawn. Instead, plant them in the shade of a taller canopy tree to give them the dappled light they prefer; let those lower limbs alone; smother the lawn with newspapers covered with decomposing leaves (or pinestraw). Then plant spring ephemerals and other shade loving wildflowers.

 Voila, you have a woodland wildflower garden. All from one understory tree!

Understory trees like Cornus florida  have excellent ecological value.

• they provide for pollinators (bees, flies, butterflies and beetles)
• the fall drupes feed birds (Tufted Titmouse, cardinals, robins, Eastern bluebird, Mockingbird and woodpeckers) and mammals (raccoons, white-footed mouse, chipmunks, squirrels)
• they shade and protect spring ephemerals
• they provide shelter/cover for birds year round
• they provide structure to the garden
• they help create a healthy and diverse ecosystem
• they're pleasing to humans

A flowering tree that provides shade for wildflowers, and cover and food for critters is certainly way more than a pretty flower face.

xoxogail

Particulars:

Commonly known as a flowering dogwood

Cornaceae family

Eastern North America from Massachusetts to Ontario and Michigan, south to eastern Texas and Mexico, and east to central Florida. 

Zone: 5 to 9

Understory tree 15.00 to 30.00 feet by 15.00 to 30.00 feet

April to May bloom

It does best with partial shade in the south and full sun in the north. 

Moist well drained soil

Showy spring flowering bracts that attract insects and butterflies

Good Fall leaf color with showy red fruits/drupes that attract birds
Winter interest~tiered branches and attractive bark
Year round shelter for birds

Can tolerate clay soil and deer do not browse mine

Disease Issues: Might be subject to anthracnose disease if grown with high humidity, poor air circulation, and heavy shade. Middle and West Tennessee tend to be warmer and drier and are less affected by dogwood anthracnose than the Eastern half of the state.

Welcome to Clay and Limestone's Wildflower Wednesday celebration. WW is about sharing and celebrating wildflowers from all over this great big, beautiful world. Join us on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Please add your url to Mr Linky and leave a comment.

Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.

Lip Smacking Deliciousness: Pollen and Nectar

Allium sphaerocephalum an attractive nectar source for bees and some butterflies

It's summer and the  flowers are  open for business.  Pollen is ready and the nectar is flowing. It's the perfect time to watch the bees (and other pollinators)  that live in your garden. 

This morning~Bee on Agastache 'Golden Jubilee'

Bees are fascinating looking creatures. They  are beautifully and perfectly adapted for feeding on nectar and pollen.  They  have a  proboscis for reaching deeply into a flower for nectar  and  hairy bodies that catch the pollen as they move from flower to flower.

last fall

Bees aren't in the business of pollinating, that's incidental to their primary task~finding food and raising the next generations!

They are as busy as...well, as bees can be.   They need nectar for energy and pollen for  their offspring/larvae.

Pollen is the  fine dust-like grains or powder formed within the anther of a flowering plant,  that must be transported from the stamen to the pistil for reproduction to occur. 

Nectar is a sweet and rich carbohydrate liquid made of amino acids, vitamins, metal ions and even protein.  (source)  It's the perfect energy booster and food for bees and other pollinators.

 Flowers produce nectar to  attract bees, beetles, butterflies, moths, bats and hummingbirds.  While collecting the nectar, pollinators transfer pollen from male flowers to female flowers.  Nature cleverly designed it to happen that way!   The floral nectaries, where nectar is produced,  are positioned at the base  of the perianth insuring that the bee's hairy body will  brush the flower's  anthers and pistil (reproductive system) and pick up those pollen grains.

Bees need regular sources of pollen and nectar.  They need energy to fuel their busy bee-ness and pollen and nectar for their young. Honeybees collect nectar and make honey for the hive residents, but, native bees make a concoction of bee saliva, nectar and pollen to feed their offspring.

Agastache is a bee magnet in my garden

I know, I've written this before~ If you want to attract bees and other pollinators to your garden:

• plant large swathes of pollinator friendly,  nectar and pollen producers
• plant host plants~don't stop at nectar and pollen plants
• plan for bloom from late spring to early winter.
• bee sure to include water
• provide nesting sites for a variety of visitors, some bare ground (ix-nay on the plastic landscape cloth) and decaying logs and even special bee houses
• Be aware that some new cultivars are not pollinator friendly.  When plants are bred to bloom for a very long time,  to be disease resistant or to have especially big, colorful flowers they might not make pollen or nectar.

Cleome 'Senorita Rosalita' is stunningly beautiful, but, completely sterile with NO visitors since she was planted!

Those plants go into containers to look pretty~Not in the  limited space in my Susan's  bed.


xxoogail

PS Now, please  raise your camera and solemnly swear that your will never, ever, ever, ever, ever use pesticides in your garden.  Now don't you feel better for having made that commitment!

In case you want to read earlier pollinator posts~

Now Is The Time To Bee-gin Thinking About Bees ( here)
This Is The Place To Bee ( here)
If You Could Plant Only One Plant In Your Garden~Don't (here)
Must Bee The Season of The Witch (here)
Go Bare In Your Garden (here)
We can't All Be Pretty Pollinators (here)
Eye, Eye Skipper, Big Eyed Pollinators (here)
What's In Your Garden (here)
Carpenter Bees (here)
Got Wildflowers?(here)
It's Spring and A Gardener's Thoughts Are On Pollinators (here)
The Wildflower and The Bee (here)
A Few Good Reasons To Plant Milkweek (here)
Got Shade? You Can Have Pollinators (here)
Royalty In The Garden (here)
A Pollinator friendly Shrub (here)
Big Goings On at C and L (here)

Other bee posts you might want to read~
Count Yourself Lucky To Have Hoverflies (here)
Bumblebee Hotel (here)
Still Taking Care Of Bzzness (here)
My Sweet Embraceable You (here)

Bee clip art (here)


This post was written by Gail Eichelberger for my blog Clay and Limestone Copyright 2011.This work protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Wildflower Wednesday: Pollinators and Their Friends

Bumble visiting Echinacea tennesseensis

Welcome to Wildflower Wednesday and a celebration of wildflowers and the pollinators they support.

A very long time ago, I was almost undone by the conditions at Clay and Limestone! Even in the face of over whelming evidence that wildflowers naturally occurred and thrived here, I tried to create the gardens I had seen in books and magazines. They were all failures. The garden conditions they needed did not exist on my patch of suburbia with its shallow, poorly draining, nearly neutral clay soil. Once I realized my garden was a Central Basin plant community with plants native to cedar glades and the adjacent oak-hickory-red cedar forests, everything fell into place. I committed to gardening where I lived. I knew that in order to have a garden that was beautiful and thrived, I was going to have to plant more native plants. I learned as much as I could about them, located plant nurseries and built my garden~plant by plant. It's a never ending process.

Campanulastrum americanum, I hope to see the pollinators now that it's blooming

I plant natives because it makes sense. Central Basin plants are able to survive our extreme weather, tolerate our shallow clay soil that’s sticky gooey in the early spring and dry as concrete all summer long, and, support wildlife. They're gorgeous, too.

My hope is that photos of C and L's wildflowers and the stories of my journey will spark your interest in native plants and gardening with wildlife in mind.


xxoogail

Without further ado~Here are a few native plants that I captured with a pollinator or two.

Working the Hydrangea arborescens 'Ryan Gainey'

Snuggling up to Agastache

Eying the cone on Echinacea

Holding onto Herbstsonne Rudbeckia (possibly a hybrid of R laciniata and R nitida)

Sipping on Stokesia

Lapping up the Liatris

Boogying with Blanket Flower

Making merry with the Monarda

Welcome to Clay and Limestone's Wildflower Wednesday celebration. I am so glad you stopped by. WW is about sharing and celebrating wildflowers from all over this great big, beautiful world. Join us on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Remember, it doesn't matter if they are in bloom or not; and, it doesn't matter if we all share the same plants. It's all about celebrating wildflowers. Please leave a comment when you add your url to Mr Linky.


xxoogail

Bee clip art (here)


This post was written by Gail Eichelberger for my blog Clay and Limestone Copyright 2011.This work protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Big Goings On At Clay and Limestone

Look who stopped by for the celebration~Eastern Swallowtail Butterfly

It's National Pollinator Week. The Secretary of the Department of Agriculture has proclaimed June 20-26, 2011 as National Pollinator Week. Clay and Limestone is joining the celebration with a look at the pollinators that live in the garden and the wildflowers that support them.

Liatris spicata with Bumble

Back in 2007 the Senate passed Resolution 580, "Recognizing the importance of pollinators to ecosystem health and agriculture in the United States and the value of partnership efforts to increase awareness about pollinators and support for protecting and sustaining pollinators..." (source) Each year since then, the Secretary of Agriculture proclaims the last full week in June as the official date of National Pollinator Week.

Poster available from Pollinator Partnership org.

Quick facts from the Pollinator Partnership

• About 75% of all flowering plant species need the help of animals to move their heavy pollen grains from plant to plant for fertilization.
• It's more then bees! About 1,000 of all pollinators are vertebrates such as birds, bats, and small mammals.
• Most pollinators (about 200,000 species) are beneficial insects such as flies, beetles, wasps, ants, butterflies, moths, and bees.
• Pollinators are keystone species~which simply means they are essential to our environment.
• Pollinators effect 1/3 of all food and beverages in the US
• That adds up to nearly $20 billion in food products each year

I don't grow veggies in my garden, but, I do need pollinators to pollinate my wildflowers. The pollinators and I are quite happy with our arrangement: There's plenty of pollen and nectar producing plants; there are host plants for offspring; water; bare dirt for ground nesting bees; there are seed heads for birds; and, there are fragrant or smelly plants for moths and flies.

If you look closely you can see the Asteraceae stars

One of the best nectar and pollen producers blooming right now at C and L is Liatris spicata. Dense Blazing Star is found throughout most of Tennessee and the eastern half of North America from Canada to Florida. It's practically foolproof and asks only for sunshine and good drainage.

Sunday in the garden

It rewards you with feathery stalks of purple blooms that are pollinator magnets! In my shallow soil it grows over two feet tall, but, in deeper soil (not richer soil) and true full sun, may top out at 4 foot. I haven't seen a pest on it but, I've seen, hover flies, bumbles, carpenter bees, green metallic bees, wasps, skippers and butterflies.

Liatris blooms from top down

I also grow L aspera and L squarrulosa, both bloom later summer and early fall, providing nectar and pollen for late visitors to the garden.

An Asteraceae family member, it has disc florets and no ray florets

With close to 40 different Liatris species in North America, you will be able to find one or two to grow in your garden. For instance Liatris punctata is perfectly adapted to western and desert gardens. Just check with your local native plant nursery....You'll love the flowers and the visitors.

xxoogail

PS my dears, you know the drill~Never, ever, ever, ever, ever use pesticides if you have a hope to have a garden filled with happy pollinators!


In case you want to read earlier pollinator posts~

Now Is The Time To Bee-gin Thinking About Bees ( here)
This Is The Place To Bee ( here)
If You Could Plant Only One Plant In Your Garden~Don't (here)
Must Bee The Season of The Witch (here)
Go Bare In Your Garden (here)
We can't All Be Pretty Pollinators (here)
Eye, Eye Skipper, Big Eyed Pollinators (here)
What's In Your Garden (here)
Carpenter Bees (here)
Got Wildflowers?(here)
It's Spring and A Gardener's Thoughts Are On Pollinators (here)
The Wildflower and The Bee (here)
A Few Good Reasons To Plant Milkweek (here)
Got Shade? You Can Have Pollinators (here)
Royalty In The Garden (here)
A Pollinator friendly Shrub (here)

Other bee posts you might want to read~
Count Yourself Lucky To Have Hoverflies (here)
Bumblebee Hotel (here)
Still Taking Care Of Bzzness (here)
My Sweet Embraceable You (here)

Bee clip art (here)

*I receive no compensation, just immense satisfaction and joy from promoting The Pollinator Partnership.

This post was written by Gail Eichelberger for my blog Clay and Limestone Copyright 2011.This work protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Bottoms Up!

Penstemon X

Bee bottoms that is!

But, let's make a toast to the bees that visit and pollinate our flowers.

They work hard~from sunrise to sunset.

Carpenter Bee visiting kale flowers

No vacations. No time off. Take these ginormous, pesty Carpenter Bees~ They are busy, busy, busy pollinating garden crops and garden plants while feeding and carrying for their young. They pollinate eggplant tomato, cucurbits, cassias, Carolina Jessamine, bee balm, aromatic sumac and wild lupine.

I had to use this one again~It's a favorite photo!

All the pollinators that visit or live in our gardens need a variety of nectar and pollen producing plants from early spring to late into the fall.

Ox-Eye Daisy

Here at Clay and Limestone we celebrate all pollinators and welcome them with as many plants as I can cram squeeze into the garden.

I don't mind that Evening Primrose could be called a thug. It's such a cheerful late spring flower, smells lovely and rips out easily.

Look at how nicely it weaves among the perennials in the Sunny Susans Bed.

Or, that Ox-Eye Daisy is a naturalized non-native. It grows well here and always attracts an interesting assortment of pollinators!

I plant bright colored plants

because pollinators love bright colors.

I do, too. Aren't I lucky that so many of my favorite natives are brilliantly colored.

You can't beat the brilliant pink and lilacs hues of Phlox pilosa. Practically Perfect Pink Phlox is a favorite of many small butterflies, bees and gardeners all over the country. Let it seed about your garden to create lovely drifts of fragrant flowers in April and May.

Just as the Phlox pilosa is beginning to fade, the humming bird and bees favorite, Penstemon X begins to bloom. P calycosus is a Central Basin Native that I can't say enough good things about! Not only does it tolerate wet feet, shade, dry soil and sun; it reseeds delightfully, creating drifts that make it easy for pollinators to visit.

Astranthium integrifolium~Entireleaf Western Daisy

~and speaking of drifts. Western Daisy is drifting about the garden. In the last month, small gnats, little bees, Hover Flies and a strange little pollen eating beetle (adult carpet beetle) have been seen on the flowers.

Scorpion Weed has faded but, not the memory of the Bumbles

So, raise your hori-hori knife, your hoe, your favorite digging tool or fork to honor the pollinators that frequent our garden! Join with me in thanking them. May these marvelous and important creatures continue to grace our gardens. Here's to planting for them and here's to creating a garden that brings us pleasure all season long~

xxoogail

PS ~ You know what's coming next! If you want pollinators~Big ones, small ones, odd ones, beautiful ones! Never, ever, ever, ever use pesticides in your garden.

This post is also part of a series on native pollinators in the garden~ Earlier posts and their links are listed below for your convenience.
Part I~Now Is The Time To Bee-gin Thinking About Bees ( here)
This Is The Place To Bee ( here)
If You Could Plant Only One Plant In Your Garden~Don't (here)
Must Bee The Season of The Witch (here)
Go Bare In Your Garden (here)
We can't All be pretty Pollinators (here)
Eye, Eye Skipper, Big Eyed Pollinators (here)
What's In Your Garden (here)
Carpenter Bees (here)
Got Wildflowers?(here)
It's Spring and A Gardener's Thoughts Are On Pollinators (here)
The Wildflower and The Bee (here)
A Few Good Reasons To Plant Milkweed (here)

Other bee posts you might want to read~
Count Yourself Lucky To Have Hoverflies (here)
Bumblebee Hotel (here)
Still Taking Care Of Bzzness (here)
My Sweet Embraceable You (here)


Bee clip art (here)

This post was written by Gail Eichelberger for my blog Clay and Limestone Copyright 2011.This work protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.