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| Sweat Bee on Black-Eyed Susas (Halictus ligatus) |
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| We dissected a Day Lily to see the male and female parts. |
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| This is a pink variety of Evening Primose, which is usually yellow |
To garden is to be an optimist, to believe in tomorrow. While there may be some immediate satisfaction in a garden, for example, the siting of a hummingbird moth or a praying mantis, so much of gardening requires patience and waiting to see what blooms and how it fits into the garden as a whole. And contrary to the belief of some, gardening isn't just a solitary passion. I was reminded of this today when a gardener named Chris, who calls himself the Flatbush Gardener, opened his garden up to a bunch of strangers who, like him, just love gardening.
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| Chris giving his tour |
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| Zebra Spider (Salticus scenicus) |
His garden is special because it is a pollinator garden and Chris knows so much about the insects that visit his flowers. The visit has inspired me to slowly transform my own home garden into a pollinator garden awash in native plants. Here are some photos I took today:
5 comments:
Thanks for visiting. Glad you got a lot out of it.
By the way, the bee on the Black-Eyed Susan, Rudbeckia, isn't a honey bee. I don't know for sure what kind of bee it is. It looks a lot like Halictus ligatus which I photgraphed and identified for the first time last summer, though in August, not June.
BugGuide is an awesome resource for getting insects, and spiders, identified. They've identified most of the insects in my garden. I'm getting better at identifying them on my own.
Hi, Ms. Seitz! Hi Flatbush Gardener! I love the photos, Ms. Seitz. The flowers in the Flatbush Gardener's garden look beautiful!
After reading the Flatbush Gardener's comment, I searched up Halictus ligatus and learned that it is known as a sweat bee and I also learned that it mines or burrows into the ground to make its nest. The picture of the bee on the Black- Eyed Susan does indeed, look like Halictus ligatus.
I was really interested when I read on your caption Ms. Seitz, that you guys got to dissect a Day Lily! It must've been really neat to see the male and female parts of the flower. I have two questions though. How did you dissect it, like what parts of the flower did you study and dissect? And how were you guys able to tell which parts were the male and female parts? I'm so curious about it because it sounds so cool!
I even visited the Flatbush Gardener's blog. I saw a post if how his backyard looked when he first bought it in May 2005 and now it looks so much better with so many different plants! I also read that when he gave you guys the tour today, he called it the "Pollinator Safari". I like how that sounds. :) The Flatbush Gardener seems like he's very passionate about identifying insects in his garden and about gardening! For example, how he uses a website called BugGuide to identify insects and spiders. It's kinda like how I am with birds. Bye! :)
Thanks Chris for correcting me. I wasn't sure about the bee, so I will correct the information. Check out the posting from one of my students, Tasfiya. She is an amazing naturalist. Tasfiya, maybe we can dissect some lilies tomorrow during Urban Nature Club. I have a bunch in my yard.
Hi Ms.Seitz!Hi Flatbush Gardener!The flowers do look beautiful!I really like how the Flatbush Gardener isn't just planting and never caring about who visits his garden.That is really cool.Yeah how do you tell the female and male parts of a flower?I never thought plants being male or female.I'm gonna check the BugGuide place.It sounds cool.
Hey, Ms. Seitz. I'd love to dissect lilies at UNC tomorrow! Too bad I might not be able to make it. :( My mom has that appointment at the hospital that I told you about. I'll talk to her and see if I could make it or not.
For some reason, I can't seem to comment on the Flatbush Gardener's blog. But I hope he visits your blog often, it would be nice to hear from him about insects and his garden.
I'm becoming more interested in flower anatomy, especially after hearing about the male and female parts of the lily. Anyways, I'm pretty excited about the rose bushes my mom is growing. I like helping her garden. The bottom of the cutting that she dipped in honey and water is slowly starting to grow roots. She had to keep it REALLY moist while it was growing the roots. But now that the roots are growing, she isn't supposed to keep it as moist as before which is why she isn't watering them as much as she used to. Later, we'll have our very own rose bush!
Also, if you don't know what I'm talking about or if you forgot, I'm talking about that thing I told you when me and Fatima came up. That our neighbors allowed us to have some rose bush clippings from their rose bush so my mom cut the end of the stem at an angle, cut off all the roses and dipped the end in honey and water. Then, she planted it in wet soil and it was supposed to start growing roots in a few weeks.
My mom said she knew that you could grow the bush from the rose bush clippings because her family did it in Bangladesh. But she didn't know how to do it properly so we went online together and found out! The process seems really cool, that the clipping could grow roots.
Well, are you doing anything this weekend? I'm going to a fair in a while on McDonald and Church Avenue. It's one of those Bengali fairs that have stands to buy things and there are Bengali celebrities singing on a stage to entertain people. I'm not usually so excited about fairs like these but now I am because I wanna get out and do something. :) Bye!
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