Month: December 2017

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Weeds and Winter Interest

In climates where winter sucks the garden inside itself and into quiet dormancy, it is often dead stalks and seed heads that provide the most visual interest. They also become, in some respects, a reminder of a garden that once was and what will be again.” — Gayla Trail, Grow Curious

If, like me, it is during the growing season that you really thrive, winters can be brutal. Color has practically been stripped from the landscape. Death and slumber abound. Nights are long and days are cold. It’s a lengthy wait until spring returns. Yet, my love of plants does not rest. And so, I look for beauty in a frozen landscape.

In evergreens, it is obvious. They maintain their color year-round. Large bunchgrasses, shrubs and trees with interesting bark or branching habits, dried fruits and unique seed heads – all of these things are easy to spot and visually interesting.

Beyond that, there are things that we are not accustomed to finding beauty in. Such things require a keen eye, close observation, and the cultivation of greater understanding and appreciation. For most people, weeds fall into this category. What is there to love or find beautiful?

I am of the opinion that there is plenty there to intrigue us. From their spent flowers to their seed heads and dried-up leaves, they can be just as interesting as the plants we deem more desirable. The winter-long green of winter annuals alone is evidence enough. So, here is my attempt to redeem some of these plants by nominating them as candidates for winter interest.

common mallow (Malva neglecta)

field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)

common mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Russian thistle (Kali tragus, syn. Salsola tragus)

Russian thistle (Kali tragus, syn. Salsola tragus)

redstem filaree (Erodium cicutarium)

curly dock (Rumex crispus)

curly dock (Rumex crispus)

prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola)

salsify (Tragopogon dubius)

wood avens (Geum urbanum)

yellow evening primrose (Oenothera biennis)

annual honesty, a.k.a. money plant (Lunaria annua)

white clover (Trifolium repens)

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A friendly reminder: Refrain from being overly ambitious with your fall cleanup and, instead, leave certain plants in place. This not only provides winter interest but can also be beneficial to the wild creatures we share space with.

 

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When Urban Pollinator Gardens Meet Native Plant Communities

Public concern about the state of bees and other pollinating insects has led to increased interest in pollinator gardens. Planting a pollinator garden is often promoted as an excellent way for the average person to help protect pollinators. And it is! However, as with anything in life, there can be downsides.

In many urban areas, populations of native plants remain on undeveloped or abandoned land, in parks or reserves, or simply as part of the developed landscape. Urban areas may also share borders with natural areas, the edges of which are particularly prone to invasions by non-native plants. Due to human activity and habitat fragmentation, many native plant populations are now threatened. Urban areas are home to the last remaining populations of some of these plants.

Concern for native plant populations in and around urban areas prompted researchers at University of Pittsburgh to review some of the impacts that urban pollinator gardens may have and to develop a “roadmap for research” going forward. Their report was published earlier this year in New Phytologist.

Planting a wildflower seed mix is a simple way to establish a pollinator garden, and such mixes are sold commercially for this purpose. Governmental and non-governmental organizations also issue recommendations for wildflower, pollinator, or meadow seed mixes. With this in mind, the researchers selected 30 seed mixes “targeted for urban settings in the northeastern or mid-Atlantic USA” to determine what species are being recommended for or commonly planted in pollinator gardens in this region. They also developed a “species impact index” to assess “the likelihood a species would impact remnant wild urban plant populations.”

A total of 230 species were represented in the 30 seed mixes. The researchers selected the 45 most common species for evaluation. Most of these species (75%) have generalized pollination systems, suggesting that there is potential for sharing pollinators with remnant native plants. Two-thirds of the species had native ranges that overlapped with the targeted region; however, the remaining one-third originated from Europe or western North America. The native species all had “generalized pollination systems, strong dispersal and colonization ability, and broad environmental tolerances,” all traits that could have “high impacts” either directly or indirectly on remnant native plants. Other species were found to have either high dispersal ability but low chance of survival or low dispersal ability but high chance of survival.

This led the researchers to conclude that “the majority of planted wildflower species have a high potential to interact with native species via pollinators but also have the ability to disperse and survive outside of the garden.” Sharing pollinators is especially likely due to super-generalists like the honeybee, which “utilizes flowers from many habitat types.” Considering this, the researchers outlined “four pollinator-mediated interactions that can affect remnant native plants and their communities,” including how these interactions can be exacerbated when wildflower species escape gardens and invade remnant plant communities.

photo credit: wikimedia commons

The first interaction involves the quantity of pollinator visits. The concern is that native plants may be “outcompeted for pollinators” due to the “dense, high-resource displays” of pollinator gardens. Whether pollinator visits will increase or decrease depends on many things, including the location of the gardens and their proximity to native plant communities. Pollinator sharing between the two has been observed; however, “the consequences of this for effective pollination of natives are not yet understood.”

The second interaction involves the quality of pollinator visits. Because pollinators are shared between native plant communities and pollinator gardens, there is a risk that the pollen from one species will be transferred to another species. High quantities of this “heterospecific pollen” can result in reduced seed production. “Low-quality pollination in terms of heterospecific pollen from wildflower plantings may be especially detrimental for wild remnant species.”

The third interaction involves gene flow between pollinator gardens and native plant communities. Pollen that is transferred from closely related species (or even individuals of the same species but from a different location) can have undesired consequences. In some cases, it can increase genetic variation and help address problems associated with inbreeding depression. In other cases, it can introduce traits that are detrimental to native plant populations, particularly traits that disrupt adaptations that are beneficial to surviving in urban environments, like seed dispersal and flowering time. Whether gene flow between the two groups will be positive or negative is difficult to predict, and “the likelihood of genetic extinction versus genetic rescue will depend on remnant population size, genetic diversity, and degree of urban adaptation relative to the planted wildflowers.”

The fourth interaction involves pathogen transmission via shared pollinators. “Both bacterial and viral pathogens can be transmitted via pollen, and bacterial pathogens can be passed from one pollinator to another.” In this way, pollinators can act as “hubs for pathogen exchange,” which is especially concerning when the diseases being transmitted are ones for which the native plants have not adapted defenses.

photo credit: wikimedia commons

All of these interactions become more direct once wildflowers escape gardens and establish themselves among the native plants. And because the species in wildflower seed mixes are selected for their tolerance of urban conditions, “they may be particularly strong competitors with wild remnant populations,” outcompeting them for space and resources. On the other hand, the authors note that, depending on the species, they may also “provide biotic resistance to more noxious invaders.”

All of these interactions require further investigation. In their conclusion, the authors affirm, “While there is a clear potential for positive effects of urban wildflower plantings on remnant plant biodiversity, there is also a strong likelihood for unintended consequences.” They then suggest future research topics that will help us answer many of these questions. In the meantime, pollinator gardens should not be discouraged, but the plants (and their origins) should be carefully considered. One place to start is with wildflower seed mixes, which can be ‘fine-tuned’ so that they benefit our urban pollinators as well as our remnant native plants. Read more about plant selection for pollinators here.

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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 they can be.

An essay published earlier this year in Conservation Biology highlights the ways in which cities “can become a refuge for insect pollinators.” In fact, urban areas may be more inviting than their rural surroundings, which are often dominated by industrial agriculture where pesticides are regularly used, the ground is routinely disturbed, and monocultures reign supreme. Even though suitable habitat can be patchy and unpredictable in the built environment, cities may have more to offer than we once thought.

Yet, studies about bee abundance and diversity in urban areas show mixed results, largely because all bee species are not created equal (they have varying habitat requirements and life histories) and because urban areas differ wildly in the quality and quantity of habitat they provide both spatially and temporally. For this reason, it is important for studies to focus on groups of bees with similar traits and to observe them across various states of urbanization. This is precisely what researchers at University of Michigan set out to do when they sampled bumblebee populations in various cities in southeastern Michigan. Their results were published earlier this year by Royal Society Open Science.

common eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) – photo credit: wikimedia commons

The researchers selected 30 sites located in Dexter, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Dearborn, and Detroit. Most of the sites were gardens or farms in urban centers. They collected bumblebees from May to September using pan traps and nets. The species and sex of each individual bumblebee was identified and recorded for each site. The percentage of impervious surface that surrounded each site was used as a measurement of urban development. Other measurements included the abundance of flowers and average daily temperatures for each location.

Bumblebees were selected as a study organism because the genus, Bombus, “represents a distinct, well-studied set of traits that make it feasible to incorporate natural history into analysis.” Bumblebees live in colonies – eusocial structures that include “a single reproductive queen, variable numbers of non-reproductive female workers, and male reproductive drones.” They are generalist foragers, visiting a wide variety of flowering species for pollen and nectar, and they nest in holes in the ground, inside tree stumps, or at the bases of large clumps of grass. The authors believe that their nesting behavior makes them “a good candidate for testing the effects of urban land development,” and the fact that members of the colony have “distinct roles, [behaviors], and movement patterns” allows researchers to make inferences regarding “the effects of urbanization on specific components of bumblebee dynamics.”

Across all locations, 520 individual bumblebees were collected. Nearly three quarters of them were common eastern bumblebees (Bombus impatiens). Among the remaining nine species collected, brown-belted bumblebees (Bombus griseocollis) and two-spotted bumblebees (Bombus bimaculatus) were the most abundant.

brown-belted bumblebee (Bombus griseocollis) – photo credit: wikimedia commons

Because bumblebees are strong fliers with an extensive foraging range, impervious surface calculations for each site had to cover an area large enough to reflect this. Results indicated that as the percentage of impervious surfaces increased, bumblebee abundance and diversity declined. When male and female bumblebee data was analyzed separately, the decline was only seen in females; males were unaffected.

Female workers do most of their foraging close to home, whereas males venture further out. The researchers found it “reasonable to hypothesize that worker abundance is proportional to bumblebee colony density.” Thus, the decline in female bumblebees observed in this study suggests that as urban development increases (i.e. percent coverage of impervious surface), available nesting sites decline and the number of viable bumblebee colonies shrinks. Because male bumblebees responded differently to this trend, future studies should consider the responses of both sexes in order to get a more complete picture of the effects that urbanization has on this genus.

Interestingly, results obtained from the study locations in Detroit did not conform to the results found elsewhere. Bumblebee abundance and diversity was not decreasing with urbanization. Unlike other cities in the study, “Detroit has experienced decades of economic hardship and declining human populations.” It has a high proportion of impervious surfaces, but it also has an abundance of vacant lots and abandoned yards. These areas are left unmaintained and are less likely to be mowed regularly or treated with pesticides. Reducing disturbance can create more suitable habitat for bumblebees, resulting in healthy populations regardless of the level of urbanization. Thus, future studies should examine the state of insect pollinators in all types of cities – shrinking and non-shrinking – and should consider not just the amount of available habitat but also its suitability.

two-spotted bumblebee (Bombus bimaculatus) – photo credit: wikimedia commons