Southwestern Piedmont Master Naturalists: Project Update: Pollinator Blitz

2021 Pollinator Bioblitz June 21 - 27; by Ed Coleman

2021 was the first time that I had participated in National Pollinator week. In addition to attending multiple webinars sponsored by the USDA, I seized the opportunity to get out and photograph pollinators in action to upload to the Pollinator Bioblitz project on iNaturalist.org. To start, I selected the Patrick County Master Gardeners Demonstration/Learning garden in Patrick Springs. I chose the Demonstration/Learning garden in particular because it contains vegetable plants, plants typically planted in a pollinator garden, and an unmowed road-side strip of “weeds”. Perhaps it was the timing of my visit, but the bees did not seem interested in the purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) and bee balm (Genus Monarda), which had been planted especially for pollinators. The bumble bees (Genus Bombus) appeared to only want white flowers on that late Wednesday afternoon. In particular, the cover crop of dutch clover (Trifolium reopens) and the Dakota Pearl potato blooms were in high demand by the bumble bees. To my surprise though, the plant clearly getting most of the attention during my visit was the dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum), located near the roadside. Dogbane is often mistaken for milkweed as both are in the same family (Apocynaceae). Widely distributed across the continent, dogbane may not be a great choice for home gardens as it can be a difficult plant to control and all parts of the plant are toxic to mammals. However, like milkweed, the USDA NRCS ranks dogbane as having a “very high” value to insect pollinators. A rating of very high places dogbane above asters, goldenrods, bee balms, and coneflowers in terms of beneficial plants for pollinators. From my observations at the Learning Garden, dogbane supports a lot of visitors in search of food. I uploaded photos of the western honey bee (Apis mellifera), eastern small milkweed bug (Lygaus kalmii angustomarginatus), potter wasp (Pseudodynerus quadrisectus), pearl crescent (Phyciodes tharos), and the dogbane leaf beetle (Chysochus Auratus) to iNaturalist. I admit that I got a little carried away as all of the insects that I photographed and posted to iNaturalist may not have been pollinators. Fortunately, the Pollinator Bioblitz project automatically filtered out the non-pollinator entries leaving me with the bumble bee, pearl crescent, and the honeybee as accepted observations from the Learning Garden site. But not to worry, the Virginia Wildlife Mapping project on iNaturalist accepts all wildlife observations. So I posted my photos to that project as well. Check out a few of my photos from National Pollinator week below.