Feb 26, 2022
European honey bee (Apis mellifera)
Pollination on Rosemary flowers
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Maldives
seen from United States
seen from Vietnam
seen from T1
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Jamaica
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Germany
European honey bee (Apis mellifera)
Pollination on Rosemary flowers
Using Weeds: Soapwort
Over the past year or so I have written about several edible weeds in an effort to highlight useful weeds. However, weeds don’t have to be edible to be useful. In fact, many weeds are most certainly not edible, but that doesn’t mean they are of no use to humans. Soapwort, for example, is poisonous, and while it does have a history of being used internally as medicine, ingesting it is not advised…
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Podcast Review: Botanical Mystery Tour
Podcast Review: Botanical Mystery Tour
My interest is piqued any time plants are featured or plugged in popular culture. Hence my ongoing series of posts, Botany in Popular Culture, featuring Futurama, Saga of the Swamp Thing, etc. Plants just don’t get enough airtime, so it must be celebrated when they do. Which is why I was excited to learn about Chicago Botanic Garden‘s new podcast, Botanical Mystery Tour, in which the plants…
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Bumblebees and Urbanization
Urban areas bear little resemblance to the natural areas that once stood in their place. Concrete and asphalt stretch out for miles, buildings of all types tower above trees and shrubs, and turfgrass appears to dominate whatever open space there is. Understandably, it may be hard to imagine places like this being havens for biodiversity. In many ways they are not, but for certain forms of life…
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Insects play a great role in the pollination of flowers in many agricultural systems, and they rely on floral resources for their survival. However, a significant decline and extinction of these crucial insects have been witnessed globally as a result of fragmentation and/or loss of their habitat such as floral resources using data from the Chagga home garden (CHGs), we aimed at (1) examining the composition and species richness of pollinator forage plants in the CHGs, (2) determining how elevation affects the diversity of pollinator forage species in CHG, (3) determining the temporal availability of pollinator forage plants in the CHGs, (4) determining the pollinator groups foraging on the plants in the CHGs, (5) determining the type of floral rewards for the insect pollinators in CHGs. It was observed that: (1)of the 302 wood species in the CHGs, 293 (97%) from 62 families were pollinator forage of which 170 species (58.02%) were trees while 123 species (41.98%) were shrubs; (2) pollinator forage species diversity decreased with increase in elevation gradient; (3) Flowering of the pollinator forage plants was spread throughout the year; (4) Bees were the most dominant group of plant visitors, visiting about 93% of the plants; (5) the majority of plants provided both pollen and nectar to insect pollinators. The results from this study suggest that traditional agroforestry systems such as Chagga home gardens can contribute to increasing the spatial and temporal availability of diverse floral resources for insect pollinators.
Insects play a great role in the pollination of flowers in many agricultural systems, and they rely on floral resources for their survival. However, a significant decline and extinction of these crucial insects have been witnessed globally as a result of fragmentation and/or loss of their habitat such as floral resources using data from the Chagga home garden (CHGs), we aimed at (1) examining the composition and species richness of pollinator forage plants in the CHGs, (2) determining how elevation affects the diversity of pollinator forage species in CHG, (3) determining the temporal availability of pollinator forage plants in the CHGs, (4) determining the pollinator groups foraging on the plants in the CHGs, (5) determining the type of floral rewards for the insect pollinators in CHGs. It was observed that: (1)of the 302 wood species in the CHGs, 293 (97%) from 62 families were pollinator forage of which 170 species (58.02%) were trees while 123 species (41.98%) were shrubs; (2) pollinator forage species diversity decreased with increase in elevation gradient; (3) Flowering of the pollinator forage plants was spread throughout the year; (4) Bees were the most dominant group of plant visitors, visiting about 93% of the plants; (5) the majority of plants provided both pollen and nectar to insect pollinators. The results from this study suggest that traditional agroforestry systems such as Chagga home gardens can contribute to increasing the spatial and temporal availability of diverse floral resources for insect pollinators.
Value of Ireland’s Insect Pollinators Greatly Underestimated
Value of Ireland’s Insect Pollinators Greatly Underestimated
A newly published report claims that both the market and non-market values of pollinators in Ireland are currently greatly underestimated.
The EPA-supported “Pollival” study led by Trinity has shown that even if we just consider locally produced food crops, loss of pollinators in Ireland could risk a €20-59 million hit per year in crop production.
And if we consider the huge amount of…
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