pollinators | The Prairie Ecologist

I’m generally a pretty happy person. Negativity tends to slide off my back. I hope this blog reflects that. I try to keep it pretty positive and full of wonder and exploration, not loaded with complaints, gripes, and negativity. I also appreciate alliteration, actually.

However.

Even I, Mr. Optimistic, have a few pet peeves related to my favorite topic of prairie conservation. Prepare yourself for some (mild) crankiness because I’m going to share three of those pet peeves with you today. They’re not the full list of my peeves. I don’t want to hit you too hard all at once. I still want to be friends at the end of this.

I’ll preface this by saying none of these are really a big deal. I don’t want people getting mad at me or thinking I’m mad at them. My primary intent is to generate thought and conversation.

1.) State Insects.

I think it’s terrific that 48 out of 50 states in the U.S. have a designated state insect – or some variation on that theme. Awesome. What’s less terrific is that fourteen of those states (29%) have the European honeybee as their state insect, including my home state of Nebraska. (Several other states have the honeybee as their “state agricultural insect”. That’s fine.)

European honeybees are really cool. They’re also a livestock species from Europe. Why are they our state insect here in Nebraska?

How embarrassing, that with all the incredible native invertebrate diversity on this continent, fourteen states couldn’t come up with anything better than a non-native livestock species to celebrate as their state insect. What’s your state bird? The chicken? Also, do you have no imagination? Why pick the same insect species lots of other states have already chosen?

I’d also like to know why Connecticut decided the European mantis was the best choice for their state insect. Seriously? You can do better, Connecticut.

The fact that both the honey bee and European mantis are from other places isn’t really my gripe, or at least I’m not coming at this with an anti-immigrant angle. My point is that if you’re going to choose one insect species out of many thousands of options, wouldn’t you want to pick something that represents the unique character of your state? A species that is tied to a habitat or place you’re proud of?

There are innumerable options for a good Nebraska state insect. I’ll just pitch my personal favorite – the camouflaged looper. IT DECORATES ITSELF WITH PIECES OF THE FLOWERS IT EATS. Come on…

Now, lots of states went further, and included a state butterfly in addition to a state insect. I love that. It’s a great way to celebrate and highlight insects most people feel good about (and I think all of those state butterflies are native species). I didn’t, however, see any state with an officially-designated state fly. Ah, well, I’m sure that will come.

2.) Native Plant Purists in Home Landscaping

Given my first peeve, this one might seem a little ironic, but stick with me. Also, who says pet peeves have to be logical?

I get really frustrated by people who promote the idea that you should use ONLY native plants in your yard. Or, even worse, people who are contemptuous of people who like plants like daffodils, zinnias, or other showy plants that aren’t native to their local area.

Monarchs seem very happy with the zinnias in our yard. Also, we think they’re pretty.

Hey purists – chill out. People who are fortunate enough to have their own yard should be allowed to design it in a way that brings them joy. There are limits to that, of course. Don’t be planting invasive species. But zinnias aren’t spreading into my state’s native ecosystems and displacing other plant species. Daffodils aren’t forming huge monocultures and reducing the diversity and resilience of habitats. If daffodils and zinnias make me happy, what’s it to you?

I love the fact that native plants are becoming more popular in landscaping. They often require less water than non-natives, which is good. More importantly, they provide important resources for native invertebrates and other species. Even more importantly, I’d argue, they help promote and normalize native wildflowers, grasses, and prairies. Keep up that native plant promotion.

At the same time, zealotry rarely ends well. If we badger people about harmless choices, we lose credibility and turn them away. It’s great to encourage and celebrate the use of native plants in landscaping, but we don’t have to bad-mouth people who enjoy having some tulips or petunias to look at. Instead, let’s put our energy into more important efforts like moderating the use of pesticides, fertilization, and irrigation in landscaping.

Missouri evening primrose is one of our favorite native plants in our yard (even though it’s only native to the very southern edge of Nebraska).

We just moved to a new house last year and are excited to populate the yard with a wide range of plants, but not all of them will be native – similar to what we did at our old house.

3.) Aiming for Pre-European Settlement Conditions

Ok, now I’m getting into more dangerous territory. I don’t want to squash anyone’s dreams, and there are a lot of really well-intentioned people out there doing great work with the goal of turning the clock back on their local landscape. I was one of those people back in college, along with everyone else in our college wildlife club.

That said, it’s just not how things work.

There are lots of reasons you shouldn’t try to convert a landscape back to what it looked like back in the 1700’s or 1400’s, or whatever you think defines “Pre-European Settlement Conditions.” I’ll list a few here:

The climate today is very different from what it was back then. Species and ecosystems are strongly tied to climate conditions. Just one crucial example is that woody plants are much more competitive with today’s higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels than they were several hundred years ago. That’s not even mentioning the importance of temperature and precipitation patterns on both plant and animal communities.
Other key factors in the environment are also different, including nutrient inputs. In central Nebraska, for example, we see Nitrogen deposition rates through both air and water in our grasslands, which has a significant impact on plant competition. As land managers, we have no direct control over those inputs.
Invasive species are inescapable. Or, more accurately, they have escaped and we have to account for their presence and impact. Most prairie stewards are constantly struggling to keep invasives from reducing biological diversity and ecological resilience.
In most places, our prairies exist today in small, relatively isolated fragments. We’ve lost our large predators and other wide-ranging animals. Populations of browsers, pollinators, parasitoids, hemi-parasites, and many other key players in ecosystems are missing or vastly changed. You can’t eliminate those ecosystem components without huge cascading effects.
A previously-farmed site isn’t going to turn into something that looks and acts like nearby unplowed prairies (let alone the prairies of the 1400’s) just because you add seeds of native plants and then manage it well. The soil texture and microfauna aren’t there, for one thing. More importantly, unplowed prairies look as they do because of thousands of years of evolution and adaptation to the human stewardship they’ve received. A newly planted prairie won’t have any of that.

This prairie is small, surrounded by trees, and embedded within a town. It isn’t ever going to look like a pre-European prairie. That doesn’t reduce its value at all.

None of this means prairies are doomed, or that we should give up on restoration or stewardship efforts. It just means we can’t focus on the past as we develop objectives and measure success. Just as the species and communities we care about are adapting to the world around them, it’s imperative that we keep adapting our restoration and stewardship techniques and objectives to keep up with changing conditions. I wrote much more on this topic last year if you want to dig in more.

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Well, there you go – three gripes from someone who tries not to gripe very often. Thank you for letting me get those off my chest. Feel free to disagree and share your own perspective. Heck, you can even share your own prairie-related pet peeves, too, as long as you can do it without attacking anyone. You’re usually very good at that, by the way. Thank you.

I’ll end with a little positivity. I am constantly inspired and energized by the people working on prairie stewardship and conservation across the country (and world). In the face of rapidly changing conditions and a public that largely doesn’t know or care about grasslands, there is a lot of innovative and adaptive work going on.

People are learning and sharing lessons through formal and informal networks and it gives me tremendous optimism for the future. As one of many examples, check out the Grassland Restoration Network blog started by Bill Kleiman and contributed to by many different authors.

Happy New Year!

This might be an awkward week to laud the value of having a non-native wildflower in my yard. I’m an invited speaker at the Indiana Native Plant Society’s annual conference this coming weekend. It’s probably (?) too late for them to cancel my appearance.

I’m mostly kidding. Today’s post is not intended to diminish the importance of native plants, either in ecological restoration or in suburban landscapes. I’m (obviously, I hope) a huge advocate for including native plants in those situations for many reasons. I’ve written about that before (here) and don’t need to cover that ground again here. However, in that same post, I also explained why Kim and I have a mix of native and non-native (and even some cultivars of native plants) in our yard. If that makes you feel agitated, I beg you to read both that post and this one before you start stomping your feet and plotting my destruction.

Monarch butterfly on a zinnia flower this week.

We moved across town last winter, abandoning garden spaces Kim and I (mostly Kim) had invested 10 years in. Our new place is mostly Kentucky bluegrass with some minimal and mostly not-our-style flower gardens along the edge of the house. While we’re both antsy to start making it ours, Kim very rationally decided that we need to wait a year before jumping into a new landscape plan. That’ll give us (her) time to scope out the sunny and shady spots, learn about what’s already here, and think about what we really want this new yard to look like.

As a result, we (she) planted a small vegetable garden in the same footprint used by the previous owner, but otherwise – with one exception – left the rest of the yard as is. That exception was that she planted a bunch of zinnias around our back deck and in a stretch of space on the west side of the house. I’m grateful for a couple reasons. First, zinnias are beautiful and I like looking at them. Second, and (finally) getting to the point of this post, they attract and feed a lot of insects, including lots of migrants. In particular, this week, they fed a couple butterflies that weren’t really supposed to be here, but showed up anyway.

Our dog, Fitz, posing with some of our zinnias.

We’ve been enjoying a bounty of pollinators and other insects on our zinnias all season. During the last few weeks, though, the activity has been even more appreciated because most of the native plants in nearby prairies and other natural areas have pretty much shut down for the season. There’s very little available pollen and nectar out there right now. In our yard, though, the zinnias are still cruising along.

While most monarchs have scooted south, the few that are still hanging around and/or passing through have really concentrated their activity on our zinnias. They’re joined by migratory painted lady and American lady butterflies, as well as other butterflies, moths, bees, flies, etc. – some migratory, some not.

Last weekend, I spotted a butterfly on our zinnias that I’d seen in books, but never in real life – a gulf fritillary. I took a couple quick photos with my phone and checked the terrific Nebraska Lepidoptera website to see what I could learn.

According to the website, the species hadn’t yet been reported in our county and it was also outside the seasonal window when it had been reported in the state. That’s pretty cool. I emailed Neil Dankert, who runs the site, to let him know what I’d seen. Apparently, a few other people in the state were reporting the butterflies in their yards, too, along with a few other species that are normally found to our south. We’d had some strong southerly winds (blowing out of the south) a day or two before I saw the gulf fritillary, so maybe a bunch of butterflies just got blown north by that weather system.

The next morning, I took my camera out behind the house and took the photos shown in this post. I saw at least two different gulf fritillaries, which I know only because one of them had a wing that was a little beat up. Well, I also saw two at once, which was another good clue, I guess. There could easily have been more than two, though – there was so much activity on the flowers, it was hard to keep track. Here are photos of some of the other insect visitors on the zinnias that morning.

I’m excited to start putting in a bunch of native plants next spring, and building those gardens out over the next several years. We’ll be sure to include wildflowers that bloom at different times of year so that we can provide nectaring options consistently through the growing season for both resident and migratory pollinators. It’ll also be fun to watch myriad insects feed on the leaves, burrow into the stems, and otherwise utilize the plant species they are familiar with and adapted to.

At the same time, though, I’m sure we’ll add species like crocus, daffodil, tulip, hyacinth, and others, just because we think they’re pretty. Zinnias, too, will continue to be a staple of our backyard color. We’ll plant a cherry tree for pies and maybe some raspberries and strawberries for eating and canning. In addition, we’ll leave one fairly big swath of mowed bluegrass so we can play frisbee with the dogs and so there’s a place for kids to play soccer or whatever they want. In short, we’ll create a yard that fits us.

Gulf fritillary and monarch butterfly sharing the same flower (momentarily).

I fully support people who want to turn their whole yard into native prairie plantings, or to landscape with only native plants. If that makes them happy, it makes me happy. I’m a little bothered, though, by the more militant among them who try to shame anyone who doesn’t want to go whole hog with them.

There are lots of ways to contribute to the world with your yard. You can be conservative in your water use, for example, both by planting species that require minimal watering and by not watering more than needed. Leaving piles of sticks and leaves around, as well as patches of bare ground, provide helpful habitat for many species. You can also be judicious about spraying chemicals for weed or “pest” control. The overuse of herbicides and pesticides is a huge problem and has big ripple effects outside of someone’s yard.

And, of course, incorporating native plants in your landscaping has innumerable benefits, both directly to insects and other wildlife and indirectly as a way of normalizing those plant species to neighbors and passers-by. Please add native species to your yard if you can!

However, don’t feel bad about throwing in a few daffodils, petunias, or zinnias as well. I sure don’t, and neither – apparently – do the butterflies.

The Prairie Ecologist

Essays, photos, and discussion about prairie ecology, restoration, and management

Tag Archives: pollinators

Prairie Pet Peeves (Part 1)

The Value of (Some) Non-Native (GASP) Wildflowers in Our Yard