Category Archives: Prairie Plants

Back Door Thieves

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I took a quick walk through one of our restored wetlands last week.  Most plants had finished blooming for the year, but in some recently-mowed patches, there were some scattered flowers of beggarticks (Bidens sp) and blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). I knelt down to look more closely at some small bees I spotted crawling around on the lobelia flowers.

I saw one bee crawl in and out of one of the flowers, but for the most part, the bees (and a few flies) were all hanging around at the base of the flowers.  As I watched, I saw one slide its long tongue into the flower.  I couldn’t tell if it opened up a hole or just took advantage of one that was already there.  Either way, it was apparently “stealing” nectar from the flower through a back window rather than entering politely through the front door.

A bee inserts its tongue into the base of a lobelia flower while two flies loiter nearby.

Another bee stealing nectar.

I sent photos and questions to both Jennifer Hopwood and Mike Arduser, who are always generous about sharing their expertise with me.  They both agreed with my interpretation, and Mike added some additional information.  He said that blue lobelia flowers have slits in them that make this kind of nectar robbing pretty easy for bees.

It seems an odd strategy for a flower to make it easy for bees to steal nectar without providing any pollination services in return.  Maybe the slits serve another purpose and the benefits outweigh the costs.  Or maybe it’s just a random loophole that natural selection hasn’t yet closed.  Regardless, blue lobelia plants tend to produce copious amounts of seed, so the flowers must get enough front door visitors to do the job.

In addition to the bees, there were a lot of flies hanging around the flowers too.  Flies have pretty short tongues, and it didn’t look like any of them were sticking those tongues into the flower slits.  Instead, they seemed to be feeding on the outside surface of the flower.  Maybe nectar was seeping through those flower slits?  Or maybe the bees were a little sloppy with their drinking and the bees were cleaning up after them?  Whatever the reason, I saw at least as many flies as bees on the flowers, so there must have been some attraction.

Flies were crawling around the bases of the flowers too, apparently feeding on the leftovers.

I wish now that I’d spent more time examining the flowers, and that I’d brought one home with me so I could look at the slits under a scope.  However, I hadn’t really planned to stop at the wetland, let alone to kneel down in the mud to look at bees stealing nectar from hapless flowers.  Also, my neck was starting to throb a little from holding my head at an uncomfortable angle necessary to photograph the bees.  Instead of sticking around to learn more, I took my camera, my muddy jeans, and my sore neck back to the truck and headed home.

Little cheater…

Photo of the Week – September 7, 2017

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The numerous wildfires in the western U.S. and Canada have been sending smoke out our way, especially earlier this week.  I got up early Monday morning to catch the sunrise, hoping a smoky haze would soften the light well into the morning and give me a good long opportunity for photography.  My plan only sort of worked…  The smoky haze was so thick, the sun was up for about 20 minutes before it finally got high and bright enough that I could even see it through the haze.

The sun finally showed up through the smoky haze about 20 minutes after sunrise.

Once I could see the sun, I still had to wait another hour or two before there was enough light to do much photography.  Not that it was painful to have to wander around our Platte River Prairies for a few hours, of course, but it was hard to see all kinds of interesting things and not have enough light to photograph them!  Now and then, the haze would clear enough that I could barely see my shadow – and I’d quickly grab my camera out of the bag and look for something to photograph before it darkened up again.

A grasshopper staring at me from its perch on stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida).

The grasshopper above and the bumblebee below were both photographed during those brief periods of brighter light.  Apart from those brief periods, the smoky haze kept things pretty dim until about 9:30 or 10am, when the light got really nice (still diffused, but by thinner haze, which created beautiful even light).

This bumblebee apparently spent the night on this dotted gayfeather flower (Liatris punctata).

When that gorgeous photography light finally arrived, I was walking around some restored wetlands and prairies we’d seeded in 2013.  There were quite a few flowers in the wetland sloughs we’d excavated and seeded in former cropland, and I enjoyed searching for some particularly photogenic examples.

Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) in restored wetland.

Blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) in the same restored wetland slough.

Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) was even more abundant than its blue cousin.

Alongside the restored wetlands, Maximilian sunflower was very abundant, and popular with pollinators – especially a horde of painted lady butterflies.

This was just one of hundreds (thousands?) of painted lady butterflies in the prairie.

I finally peeled myself away from the prairie and headed home, but the smoky light would have allowed me to keep photographing for most of the day (though the breeze was challenging).  By Tuesday, the wind had shifted directions, and we’ve had bright sunny days since, which limits photography to early mornings and late evenings.

This is the time of year when I start to feel an urgency to photograph as many flowers and insects as I can because I know they’re not going to be around much longer.  We had temperatures in the low 40’s (F) last night, and parts of Nebraska were forecast to have frost.  Hopefully, we’ll get at least a few more weeks of flowers before the first big freeze knocks most of them out for the year.