Science & Nature

Want to Help Plants and Pollinators Make a Love Connection? Check Out Morton Arboretum’s New ‘Matchmaking’ Info

Morton Arboretum has gotten into the matchmaking business.

Thanks to a recent update to the arboretum’s website, gardeners will find it easier to broker a love connection between plants and pollinators.

The descriptions for nearly 300 plants have been expanded to include a “pollinator and wildlife” section that provides a deeper dive into which flowers benefit what pollinators, and vice versa.

Where previously descriptions only vaguely mentioned whether a plant might be “beneficial to pollinators,” they now will reference, say, the particular species of moth that uses a plant as a larval host.

“We wanted to drill down and get a little bit more detailed,” said horticulturalist Sharon Yiesla, plant knowledge specialist in the arboretum’s Plant Clinic.

It’s an addition the arboretum has been thinking about for more than a decade, but the timing was ripe to finally take action, Yiesla said, as more and more people have become interested in native plants, an interest that for many is now extending to pollinators.

“Before it was, ‘Oh, I saw on social media that native plants are good.’ And that’s all they knew — ‘native plants are good,’” she said. “That’s a great starting point, but now some of them are starting to ask about specific plants and from there they’ve moved on to pollinators. So we see that knowledge, that interest, growing among the public.”

Native mining bees, like the one seen here, are among the earliest pollinators to emerge in spring, and you'll find them on early native bloomers like golden alexander and trout lily. (Wirestock / iStock)

The monarch butterfly — and its well-publicized reliance on milkweed — has in some ways been the poster child for this movement. And alarming headlines about honeybee “colony collapse” have also gone a long way toward raising the profile of pollinators and the threats to their survival.

But those two high-profile species barely scratch the tip of the surface when it comes to the world of pollinators.

“There’s so many insects that people don’t even think about,” Yiesla said. “We think about the pests — the bad guys — but there’s just thousands of species out there that are good guys, that are benefiting from the pollen and the nectar they get from the flower and in turn are helping the flower.”

Take the pawpaw, a native fruit tree that’s gained a cult-like following.

It’s pollinated by flies, which are attracted to the plant’s purplish-brown flowers in the spring.

“People kind of think about flies being dirty and disgusting, but there’s a ton of different flies and they’re not all looking for dead meat at the side of the road,” Yiesla said.

Likewise, people tend to assume all beetles are bad, but plenty of trees and flowers are pollinated by beetles.

“Some of them are there to feed on pollen and nectar and they’re doing good things for us,” she said. “Just because you see a beetle doesn’t mean you should kill it.”

Want to play matchmaker? Check out a plant’s benefits to and from pollinators on Morton Arboretum’s updated website. (Screenshot)

It’s important, Yiesla added, to understand that pollinator-friendly gardening is a two-way street. An insect may visit a plant and pollinate it, or it might need a plant as a host for its young.

“Which means we might have caterpillars or young beetles feeding on leaves, which I know is distressing to people, but it’s part of the lifecycle,” Yiesla said. “We have to withstand a little damage so that this insect can continue to pollinate and has a chance to raise its young.”

To access the arboretum’s “pollinator and wildlife” information, simply enter a plant’s name in the website’s search box.

If that plant has a known relationship with pollinators, it will show up in the “more information” section. Yiesla noted that updating the website is an ongoing process, with more plant profiles continually being expanded to include the pollinators they benefit from or serve.

For gardeners looking to maximize their landscape’s pollinator potential, Yiesla’s best advice is to mix things up: plant flowers in a variety of colors, shapes and sizes, and pay attention to bloom seasons, aiming to have something flowering from April into October.

The color of the flowers of the pawpaw tree are attractive to the flies that pollinate them. (NatureServe / Flickr Creative Commons)

She said she’s seen her own redbud tree loaded with native bees in spring and she has a late-flowering shrub that attracts monarchs, hummingbirds and bees looking to “fill the tank” in September.

Though Yiesla said she doesn’t like to put too many boundaries on a gardener’s creativity, if there’s one plant she’d encourage more people to use in their landscapes, it would be goldenrod.

Yes, goldenrod.

Thanks to a misguided ad for allergy medication that erroneously depicted goldenrod as the cause of seasonal sinus misery — for the record, that would be ragweed, a completely different plant — “a lot of people fear goldenrod,” Yiesla acknowledged.

But goldenrod is actually a great late-season plant that blooms when almost all other flowers are spent.

“Pollinators love goldenrod,” she said. “This is a flower that everyone comes to. I see butterflies, I see bees, I see beetles. It’s just like somebody opened the smorgasbord and everybody stopped by.”

Talk about a case of mistaken identity: Goldenrod is an important late-blooming native plant for pollinators, but it gets confused with ragweed. (Olga Chetvergova / iStock)

With roughly four decades under her belt advising the public on all things plant-related, Yiesla said it’s been gratifying to witness the shift in public attitudes toward native plants and, by extension, pollinators.

"Probably 20 years ago, if I’d tried to talk to somebody about, ‘Hey put some native plants in,’ they would have looked at me like, ‘What?’” she said.

“We’re really glad that people are interested now. That they’ve gone beyond ‘Pollinators are great, native plants are great.’ Let’s talk about why they’re great and how we can help them,” Yiesla continued. “That’s encouraging that people want to know more — they’re really into this. It’s not just a little trend that’s going past them that they’re climbing on.”

Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 |  [email protected]

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