Monthly Archives: January 2025

What Do Pollinators Need?

Posted on by Scott Vogt

It hard to believe that spring is coming as I sit here and await sub-zero temperatures tonight.  This extended period of cold weather with ice and snow is hard to embrace but I know “this too shall pass”.  Anyway, this cold weather has me hunkered down doing some reading and planning for spring. 

While reading a horticulture trade magazine, I came across a short blurb called “The Perfect Mix” by Jennifer White.  The gist of the article highlighted a study by Auburn University that observed which wildflowers attract and help pollinators in the southeastern United States.  Of all the wildflowers they observed, Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), Indian blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella) and Blue vervain (Verbena hastata) attracted 89% of all bee taxa. 

Bumblebee on Echinacea purpurea – photo by Janelle Flory Schrock

The study also found that even obscure wildflowers are important in the lifecycles of many uncommon or “common specialist” native bees.  These rare and uncommon native bees need the most help as they struggle to find enough nectar sources for their survival. 

From this study the researchers were able to put together a seed mix of wildflowers that is highly attractive to pollinators, particularly bees. Those three wildflowers are important for many native bees, but they only bloom for a short period during the growing season. The takeaway for me from this article was that pollinators need many different wildflowers to complete their lifecycles.  You may say, “DUH”, that seems to make sense, but we don’t always think about pollinators along with aesthetics as we are putting together a native habitat garden.

Gaillardia aristata

Successful plantings that help pollinators the most have a succession of blooms throughout the year.  A good design has a progression of blooms starting in April and continuing through October.  As I put together a design, I pay close attention to groupings of wildflowers and when they bloom.  I generally don’t put two spring blooming wildflowers groups right next to each other in the design but rather have a spring bloomer next to a summer bloomer next to a fall bloomer with some native grasses incorporated for cover and texture. These overlapping blooms mimic what we find in the prairies.    

I work really hard to create a succession of bloom in most of my designs.  It can be difficult in smaller designs, but it is so important.  By having plants coming into and out of bloom throughout the year, pollinators will keep coming back to your yard to find the sustenance they need for their survival.  Grouping the same species of wildflowers together also makes it easier for pollinators to find blooming plants. They just have to buzz from one blooming plant to the next without expending much energy.  Pollinators love clusters of blooming plants.     

Overlapping bloom periods with a diversity of plants is the key to a successful pollinator garden. I try to map out wildflower bloom times to make sure I have all the months of the growing season covered.  Become familiar with the plants in your garden and put together a simple spreadsheet focused specifically on bloom times. This will not only help you create a beautiful garden, but one that attracts bees and other pollinators to your garden all year long.  This seems so simple, but it will have a dramatic affect.

Blue sage with bumblebee

A League of Their Clone

Posted on by Katie Schmidt

We get a lot of questions about what exactly it means for a plant to be a cultivar or a variety, and if that is “good” or “bad” for pollinators or ecological value. There are are a lot of strong opinions on the matter, but to really answer that question it is important to know how that plant is produced, where it was discovered, and what, in terms of flower form and leaf color, has been altered. It can be very confusing! Come along with us on our blog series where we plunge into the intrigues of plant reproduction and patenting, and the impact that the horticulture industry has on the market for native species.

Today’s question is: What does it mean when a cultivar or variety is “clonal”? And what are the pros and cons of using them in the landscape?

People often think a “clone” is a newfangled science fiction concept. But some plants reproduce this way naturally. Take the beloved house plant Chlorophytum comosum, also known as spider plant or airplane plant.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons http://Florian Wickern, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Anyone who has owned one of these beauties knows how prolifically it produces miniature versions of itself. In nature, these babies would eventually drop off and land in the crevice of a tree or log to put down roots and make more miniature versions. The mother plant lives on seemingly forever! We see the same method of reproduction in rhizomatous plants like sumac, persimmon and aspen trees. The shoots that form vast colonies are all connected, all part of one organism. We call these clones because, genetically speaking, they are just copies of their parent. As there was no sexual reproduction to produce a seed, the parent plant and baby plant are identical.

Clonal Propagation

Humans often help the process along if we want to preserve the attributes of a particular plant. Clonal propagation can be vegetative, via tissue culture, or by division. Let’s say I’m out on a hike when I spot a clump of little bluestem that catches my eye. Very unique: short and reddish, more rounded, compact and deeply colored than the taller thin bluestem all around it. This plant may be a genetic outlier, holding a mutation in its genome that caused these characteristics. With the permission of the landowner, I could dig up a part of the plant and take it home. That is known as a division. It creates a duplicate of parent plant, with the same genetic makeup. And if I were to grow it in my yard and divide it a hundred more times, it would still be like the original.

‘Twilight Zone’ Bluestem, photo courtesy of Walter’s Gardens.

True Blue

If I plant this bluestem in my garden, it should show the same physical traits as the parent plant. I say should because this is the test – field trials are necessary to make sure that a division (clone) of a desired plant actually holds true. Sometimes mutations are flukes, a product of some environmental factor like predation or soil conditions. In that case, the desirable traits do not stay over time. If I manage to keep it alive for several seasons, and it continues to look as expected, then we are really in business! If I went on to field trial it many many times, name it, and market it to garden centers, this would end up being a new cultivated variety, or cultivar. Not to be confused with a botanical variety.

This chart made by Hoffman Nursery (one of our grass suppliers) shows the wide variety of traits that little bluestem can have, and the cultivars that reliably exhibit them. Named cultivars are the result of many field trials and much data collection before they eventually come to market as trusted landscaping specimens.

Why not just collect seeds instead?

In many cases, seed from the plant we want to reproduce does not come true to type. This means the special qualities we liked in that particular plant are not transmitted to the offspring reliably. Seeds are produced via sexual reproduction and gene mixing. The natural process of pollination creates a sort of genetic smoothie – everything gets all mixed together to create new individuals, with its variable characteristics. Some will be tall, short, upright, floppy, more reddish or almost completely blue. If you want the exact look as the original plant you discovered, reproducing clonally is necessary.

Two prairie dropseed plants (straight species, non-clonal) seen here, planted at the same time just a few feet apart. They exhibited wildly different growth rates. In the foreground, it is only twelve inches tall while nearby a different individual grows to be almost three feet! Some of this difference is likely genetic variation.
‘Tara’ is a dwarf dropseed cultivar well-suited for public spaces because of its short and upright habit. It was found growing in Southeastern Wisconsin by plantsman Roy Diblik. Photo from Hoffman Nursery, originally from Intrinsic Perennials.

Pros and Cons of Clonal Propagation

The benefit of clonal propagation is uniformity. Mass planting in urban settings often demands certainty from height, color, habit and vigor. Using seed-grown bluestem gives more variable results. I advise folks to think carefully about their goal when planting natives: Is it to create a prairie reconstruction or research plot? Seed strains and straight species are best here, as they will give you the most natural results, and hopefully add to the genetic fitness of all the nearby bluestem species. Do you need something very tidy and reliable for an HOA, city street median, or parking lot island? Cultivars will likely yield more uniform results, and be well received by the audience you are trying to impress. The plants you use truly depend on the goal you are chasing and the maintenance plan you have in place.

Later in this series, we will dive into the complicated process of plant patenting and the complicated language around varieties and hybrids. Stay tuned!