Written by Heather Holm; Published by Pollination Press, LLC
Reviewed by Susan Harkins
I’m fond of saying that my favorite flower is the one I’m looking at. Similarly, my favorite book is the one I’m currently reading. However, when I say that Heather Holm’s Pollinators of Native Plants is one of my favorite books, I mean it. I keep just a few reference books close at hand, and this book is one of them.
It’s the most comprehensive, photo-filled book I’ve found on identifying the native pollinators that depend on our native flora. Every plant has a two-page spread that contains what you need to know about that plant to determine if it’s a good fit for your property and a full page or more of all the native pollinators it will attract. You get a full picture.
Its use goes beyond identifying pollinators: it’s one of the first books I pull out when wanting information about a particular plant, with or without consideration of its pollinators. However, when I want to identify a pollinator, it’s my go-to book. Often, I’m looking for host plants. This book supplies that information plus clear pictures of the pollinator in larvae form, which is invaluable when determining if I have an invading force in the yard or I’m seeing normal wear and tear by native beneficials.
The largest part of the book comprises the two-page spreads of 65 native plants. A few chapters in the beginning offer general advice from anatomy to ecothreats. At the end of the book, you’ll find visual botany glossaries, charts, garden designs, and more.
Pollinators of Native Plants is an outstanding reference on native trees and flowers that support our native pollinators. The detailed yet friendly layout make it easy to apply the information to your own property.
Heather Holm currently lives in Minnesota where she assists with native been research projects, the most recent being a study on native pollinators and cultivated blueberries. As a community supporter, she helps restore city-owned property for pollinators and people. You can keep up with Heather’s speaking engagements here: https://www.pollinatorsnativeplants.com/.
Susan Harkins is the Managing Editor of The Lady Slipper.
Cumberland Pitch Pine Barrens of Pine Mountain, a rare community in Kentucky
Hello fellow native plant enthusiasts. It’s been roughly 6 months since the pandemic took hold of our daily lives. Plans were put on hold. Refocused efforts on health and safety of our families and friends immediately became priority. KNPS had started out the year with a lot of momentum with our strategic planning meeting, and I would like to personally thank our board member Jeff Nelson for leading this effort. Our committee members were planning hikes, symposiums, seed exchanges, forming an official plant conservation alliance, and bringing back our native plant stewardship program. But these plans quickly had to be canceled or postponed out of caution for our members and friends. So much uncertainty affected everyone and it does not seem to be getting any better at this time. Life is precious and we only have one chance to live it. It’s okay to switch gears in order to remain focused on what is fundamentally most important. Despite all the unexpected events of this year, our online newsletter continued with some really great articles. I want to personally thank Susan Harkins, our editor in chief, for all her work organizing and publishing The Lady Slipper along with coeditor and EKU student Nick Koenig.
We are now beginning to regroup and plan for a virtual meeting this fall. In the meantime, I know many of you all have been getting outside and continuing to find solace and comfort in the constant yet ever changing natural world, where spring fades to summer, fall, and the inevitable winter, always changing, yet always there for us to witness all of the amazing diversity we have outside our back doors. Seek out diversity of the plants in our natural areas, as well as the company you keep. It’s important. We will all come together again eventually, but until then let’s navigate this virtual world.
Join our Facebook and Instagram groups. Join the discussions. Don’t forget to document your observations on our naturalist projects for documenting native plants on roadsides and our Botanists Big Year 2020, https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/kentucky-roadside-native-plants and https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/kentucky-botanists-big-year-2020. If you are interested in helping with any of our ongoing plant conservation projects, please contact us to find ways to plug you into some of our ongoing projects that we coordinate through the Office of Kentucky Nature preserves.
Tara R. Littlefield, KNPS president and Kentucky Plant Conservation Coordinator
Above are a few of the interesting plants and communities I have worked on this year, from remnant grasslands in our natural areas, powerline and roadsides, to seeps/bogs and orchid restoration, and forest biodiversity surveys. Kentucky is such a beautiful state with so much diversity! T.R. Littlefield
The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. With this article, we will begin to occasionally feature an article from a past issue. This one, about one of Kentucky’s loveliest natives, the New England Aster, first appeared in the summer of 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2. If you would like to see other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 34, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2019 (after which we moved to this blog format) can be found.
The author, Mary Carol Cooper, left a huge legacy to the native plant community when she passed in 2016. In almost every native plant gathering, her name is mentioned and a moment is given over to appreciate her knowledge, which she freely shared. Her passion led many of us to our love of natives; she was a mentor and friend to many of us.
New England Aster: 2010 Wildflower of the Year
ByMary Carol Cooper, Salato Center Native Plant Program Coordinator
The Wildflower of the Year is chosen based on the number of nominations it receives and this year more wildflower enthusiasts statewide voted than ever before! They chose New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) as the Salato Native Plant Program Wildflower of the Year for 2010. Aster comes from the Greek word for “star.” It describes the star-like form of the flower. Other familiar words using “aster” are astronomy, astrology and astronaut. According to Greek legend, the aster was created out of stardust when Virgo (the maiden Astraea, goddess of innocence and purity) looking down from heaven, wept. Asters were scared to all the gods and goddesses and beautiful wreaths made from the blossoms were placed on temple altars on very important festive occasions. Known in France as “eye of Christ” and in Germany as starworts, asters were often burned to keep away evil spirits. A hodgepodge of asters was thought to cure the bite of a mad dog. Shakers used the plant to clear their complexions and ancient Greeks used it as an antidote for snakebites and to drive away snakes. Virgil believed that boiling aster leaves in wine and placing them close to a hive of bees would improve the honey. Native Americans found many uses for asters, from treating skin rashes and earaches to stomach pains and intestinal fevers. Nerve medicines and cures for insanity were made from some asters and others were eaten as food. Some were smoked in pipes as a charm to attract game, especially deer. Today there are no medical uses for asters.
New England Aster, photo by Thomas Barnes
The genus Aster has recently undergone a name change due to close study using DNA testing and other techniques. There are about 150 flowering plants in North America traditionally placed in the aster genus. About 50 of them are considered common and widespread. Now there is only one species left with the name Aster. The other species have been given several tongue-twisting generic names. For the botanist, renaming of the asters brought accuracy and order. For the layperson, it removed some wonderfully colorful names and replaced them with unspellable and unpronounceable names! Aster novae-angliae was translated as “star of New England” and now as Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, it is literally “fused hairs of New England.” The word Symphyotrichum was created in 1832 to describe the hairs on the seeds of a European plant.
New England Aster is an erect perennial that grows to a height of 2’ to 6’ tall with a stout root crown or thick, short rhizome and clustered stems, usually with spreading hairs. The leaves are alternate, sessile, entire, lanceolate, 1” to 4” long with pointed lobes at the base that conspicuously clasp the stem. The ray flowers range from violet, rose, or magenta and are very showy. The disk flowers are yellow. This aster is one of our largest and showiest asters. There can be from 40 to 80 ray flowers on a head! These asters bloom from August to October and are a critical late-season nectar plant for butterflies, especially the Monarch, that stock up for their long migration to Mexico. New England Asters are found in mesic to wet open woods and fields across Kentucky. They prefer average to moist soil and full sun. Not only are the New England Asters critical for Monarch butterflies, it is the host plant for the Pearl Crescent and one of the host plants for the Saddleback Caterpillar Moth. Several game birds, including the wild turkey, a few songbirds, including the tree sparrow, and small mammals, such as the chipmunk and white-footed mouse, feed on the leaves and seeds. Work plantings of New England Aster into your fall landscape. Use them singly or in small groups in the rear of a sunny border. They look beautiful with our native sunflowers, goldenrods, mistflower and rose mallow. They are also perfect for rain gardens as they thrive on moist to dry soil. They are easy to naturalize in roadside ditches, road banks, and open grassy areas. A sunny site where soil remains moist throughout the season is also ideal. Asters have always been recognized as decorations. The flowers of most species last several days after being picked and put into vases, so what better than New England Asters in beautiful fall arrangements along with other fall bloomers.
Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum), often called Stiltgrass or most commonly Microstegium, is a shade tolerant grass in the Poaceae/Grass plant family. This is the second most biodiverse plant family in Kentucky right behind Asteraceae/Sunflower family. Given the massive number of species in the family and the distinctness between members in the family, recognizing Microstegium can be tricky but I hope to help so that native plant lovers can start to remove this species from their landscape!
Description
It is likely if you have hiked along a creek in a disturbed area or walked along a road, you have probably come across Japanese Stiltgrass and thought nothing of it. However, this should be of great concern to landowners/land managers/native plant enthusiast. Once you can competently identify the next patch of Microstegium you come across, you can help eradicate it from the area.
DISTINCT FEATURES
By far, the most distinctive feature for Microstegium that I use in field identification is the faint silver line running down the middle vein of the leaf. This characteristic is not as prominent and distinctive among any other native grasses in Kentucky.
Silver line on leaf of Microstegium (picture taken by Nick Koenig).
APPEARANCE
Japanese Stiltgrass is a “weak-stemmed annual, branching, decumbent [running along the ground then rising up], rooting at the lower nodes [points where leaves or stems come out].” (Weakley 2015).
Picture of a few Microstegium shoots prior to flowering and seeding (picture provided by Jeff Nelson).
LEAVES
As described in the Flora of the Southeast (Weakley), the leaves are ovate-lanceolate (meaning oval and much longer than wide, roughly 2.5-7 times longer than wide ), 2-10 cm long tapering at the base.
HABITAT
Microstegium can most likely be found in “disturbed areas, colonizing moist, rich soil, especially in floodplains” such as along a creek bank where it is often found (Weakley 2015). Due to the Japanese Stiltgrass’s ability of being shade-tolerant, the species can make deep incursions in a forested area.
I am a transplant. I’m not a Kentucky native, and I’ve become naturalized here. In 2012, I shifted my lifestyle from migratory traveler to a rooted homesteader when I moved from the arid southwest to the lush and verdant southeast. By staying in one place for the past several years, my restless wandering spirit has calmed down. In the forest garden that my partner, Russ Turpin, and I call our yard, I find unexpected joy in relationships between myself and the place, the plants, and the animals.
Curiosity and a disdain for boredom spurs me to learn more about the natural world. I don’t take for granted the beauty of our natural yard that buffers our home from the traffic, heat and noise of the city.
My home environment is much more urban than many of the places I’ve lived, so it’s important for me to bring nature as close as possible. A landscape full of native plants, providing habitat for insects, birds, amphibians, and mammals, is also a vibrant space for human creatures like me to just be. Daily comforts of my forest-y yard include the smell of moist leaf litter, dappled shade of oaks and redbuds, rain droplets bejeweling jewelweed, wild mushrooms appearing in all colors and shapes, and spicebush hedges that provide a privacy screen.
It’s not all peace and harmony though. Nature can be a difficult neighbor. I’d like to share four main considerations for the novice natural landscaper to be mindful of. In any relationship, it’s important to manage our expectations and work with natural tendencies.
1. Scaling Down
As I’ve come to terms with the smaller adventures that await me just outside my back door, my appreciation for the little things has grown immensely. I had never known the spectacular scenes of fireflies as a child, so I’m full of wonder at these luminescent fairy-like creatures on warm summer nights. (https://www.hobbyfarms.com/the-decline-of-fireflies/)
A spicebush swallowtail caterpillar graced our garden and kept us turning leaves over to check on it for weeks. Finding other insect eggs underneath leaves is like discovering new life on another planet, but it’s right under our noses all the time! Within our 7,000 square foot yard, keeping an eye out for the incremental changes in the landscape gives me a reason to take slow and quiet walks, and look and listen closely.
Spicebush swallowtail
Fitting everything we want into the property requires a lot of creativity, and some compromises. Planting in layers maximizes space. I have learned that there are not many colorful flowers that grow in the shade, so our yard is monochromatic compared to our neighbors’ sunny and nearly treeless lots. Accepting that the yard is a woodland rather than a park ecosystem was an important step in stopping the cycle of wanting something to grow just because I like it, only to watch it die because it’s the wrong plant in the wrong space.
Now, we have agreed to leave a space open until we find the right shade-loving plant for the forest floor layer. Some happy residents there are wild ginger (Asarum canadense), stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), and a variety of ferns and sedges. Our newest additions are forest medicinals: black cohosh (Actaea racemosa), ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), and goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis). Planted last fall, they are thriving under the protection of our big pin oak. It feels like we have made a new friend who feels right at home. Their habitat is the right size, has the right amount of light, and fits them with just the right amount of space.
Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) is the most widespread and arguably the most invasive of the nonnative invasive honeysuckle shrubs in Kentucky. Jeff Nelson’s article on Amur honeysuckle provides a general overview of the species. This article provides some details as to why this species is so invasive and why is an ecologically undesirable species.
Amur honeysuckle, native to central and northeastern China, Japan (rare), Korea, and far eastern Russia, occurs as an understory shrub in open hardwood and mixed hardwood-conifer forest consisting of oaks, elms and other hardwoods and fir, spruce and hemlock. It is also known from and more common in riparian and scrub communities (Luken and Thieret 1996). It grows as scattered individual shrubs or small clumps, not unlike viburnums do in Kentucky. Large, dense stands do not typically occur, but in open, riparian areas it can be weedy. In its native range, individuals typically do not exceed 4 inches diameter and 20 feet tall (Yang et al. 2011). In Kentucky, the species is often an understory shrub in open forest, but forms dense thickets at forest edge, along fence rows and in open areas. It grows larger here as well, to 6 inches diameter and 30 feet tall (personal observation).
Large Amur honeysuckle, two stems 5 inches or greater in diameter. 29 April 2020. Photo by David Taylor
This shrub leaves out early in spring, often breaking bud in mid-March, long before native trees and shrubs. By mid-April of most years, leaves are fully expanded, and the shrubs are actively growing. In the fall, Amur honeysuckle typically senesces (leaves turn yellow and drop) in late October to mid-November, and sometimes not until early December. Native trees and shrubs typically break bud late March to mid-April and do not fully expand until early May. In eastern Kentucky, they are actively dropping their leaves by mid- to late October in most years. The extra 5-8 weeks of photosynthetic activity in the honeysuckle allows it to store additional energy giving it an edge over native species (McEwan et al. 2009). It is also somewhat tolerant of late freezes. Both promote its invasive nature.
Tall Amur honeysuckle, approximately 27 feet tall. 29 April 2020. Photo by David Taylor
While Amur honeysuckle grows better in full sun (Luken 1995), it is known to survive in 1 percent of full sunlight in the heavy shade of trees (Luken et al. 1997a). The native spring flowering spice bush (Lindera benzoin) by comparison, requires about 25 % of full sun to survive (Luken et al. 1997a). Forest grown Amur honeysuckle under heavy shade tends to produce few stems which grow upward toward light specks. They tend not to have much branching, nor do they attain much diameter. In the open, individual shrubs produce numerous stems and branching is extensive. Maximum diameters are obtained in the open (Luken et al 1995a). Overtopped Amur honeysuckle shrubs respond with the production of long, upright stems that seek light. Honeysuckle in open forest may branch extensively and produce heavy shade.
We could all use a little help in the garden, but good help is hard to find. Thankfully, nature provides the best helpers money can’t buy: bees! The trick is attracting these handy pollinators to your garden.
Monarda by John Lodder
1: Native Plants, Please
One of the best ways to lure bees to your garden is by filling it with native plants. The scarlet bee balm (Monarda didyma) is a great option. It erupts in firework shaped red blooms in June and requires full sunlight. The native lonicera will also attract bees, unlike the invasive lonicera or busy honeysuckle, which is pollinated by moths.Native plants are crucial for creating a healthy ecosystem, and they practically take care of themselves. Since they’re acclimated to Kentucky’s climate and soil, they’ll need little water or maintenance. Certain natives can even decrease water runoff and erosion. In addition to bees, they’ll attract other native wildlife to your garden.
2: Make it Colorful
Use many colors.
Bees have an acute sense of smell and a keen eye for color. Bees use color to help find the best flowers for pollination: certain colors (yellow and blue) will draw their attention more than others. By diversifying your garden’s color palette, you’ll entice even more bees. Try adding purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurea) to brighten up your garden. These flowers produce star-shaped blooms in June and July, and also attract monarch butterflies. You can also add sweet coneflower (Rudbeckia subtomentosa) for a splash of yellow. Sweet coneflower blooms from July to September.
3: Shady Spaces
Creating a hospitable environment for your garden helpers is easy. Choose plants that create enough shade and shelter from the wind and direct sunlight to give your guests a place to rest. The longer bees stay in your garden, the longer they can pollinate your plants! To keep bees in your garden longer, create a small bee bath. Fill a shallow dish with water and rocks or decorative pebbles. Be sure to change the water frequently. This lets your visitors take a quick, refreshing sip without leaving your garden.
4: No Pesticides
Keep pesticides out of your garden. Even organic pesticides can harm and deter bees from visiting. Native plants will naturally deter harmful pests. Pesticides won’t kill only visiting bees. Workers crawling over your blooms carry the pesticides back to their hives. The introduction of pesticide to a hive can contribute to Colony Collapse Disorder. This causes the other bees to abandon their hive, resulting in the death of the colony.
5: Bee Our Guest
Supply a bee hotel.
Create a safe place for your bee visitors to rest by building your own bee hotel. Group bamboo tubes or cardboard tubes together. You can also drill holes into wooden blocks. Bee hotels do need to be maintained, so it’s something to consider when you start working on your new DIY project. The hotels provide bees with safe nesting options to ensure they stick around your garden. In addition, experts suggest that you keep them small and specific; attracting too many species to the same hotel can increase disease and predation.
Bees are a crucial part of our ecosystem, and harmful practices have endangered them. Choosing native plants makes your garden a hospitable place for our pollinating friends.
Emily is an environmental journalist whose home is filled with native plants and flowers. When she’s not tending to her indoor plants, you’ll find her in her vegetable garden, which she doesn’t mind sharing with the local wildlife. She loves pugs and pizza, oh, and her husband, too.
