Native Plants and Pollinators
The Buzz about Save the Bees!
You may have seen in the news that insect populations are in decline. Recent studies have shown a 45% decrease in insect populations over the last 40 years (University of California, Riverside). At the species level, over 40% of insect species are in decline and 1 in 3 insect species is endangered (NPR).
European honey bees are perhaps the bees that come to mind when we think about bees, but there is a lot of biodiversity among bees. In fact, there are over 20,000 species of bees, and there are 4,000 bee species that are native to the United States (USGS). So the wild bees of the United States represent 20% of the global biodiversity of bees. In New England alone there are over 350 different native bee species, and most of our wild bees are solitary bees with short foraging ranges of around 300 meters (Tufts).
The threat to pollinators is a threat to the richness and biodiversity of our environment. The good news is that European honeybees are not at risk; they are carefully tended to as part of our food system - both for pollinating crops and making honey. However, our wild bee populations are in trouble due to insecticide use and loss of the native plants that they rely on in their habitat. In Massachusetts, our number of wild bumblebee species has dropped from 11 to 7, and of the 7 remaining species, 3 may disappear from Massachusetts over the next decade unless we can reverse their population decline: Bombus fervidus (the golden northern bumble bee), Bombus terricola (the yellow banded bumble bee) and Bombus vagans (the half-black bumble bee) (Mass.gov).
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We can help save the wild bees and butterflies that are endangered by planting our gardens and parks with the native plants that they rely on.
Why Native Plants?
Much like how the vanilla orchid can only be naturally pollinated by the Mexican melipona bee, our wild bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds co-evolved with and cannot survive without our native plants. This means that the biodiversity of our environment is best served by building a pollinator pathway of native plants throughout our communities.
We can probably all agree that orchids are amazing and beautiful, but sometimes caring for our local environment means we need to rethink the question: what is a weed? The survival of the Monarch butterfly relies on the milkweed plant, which is the only food source for Monarch caterpillars. There are over 70 species of milkweed that are native to the United States, and 5 milkweed species are native to Massachusetts (Massachusetts Audubon), but we don’t often choose to plant weeds in our gardens. Worse still, milkweed was once abundant across the United States, but it has been almost completely removed from farms and rangeland by the use of herbicides.
Because of this loss of milkweed in their habitat, the population of Monarch butterflies has plummeted by 94.6% in the last 20 years (US Wildlife Federation), and the Monarch butterfly is in danger of extinction. But we can help turn that around by seeing the beauty in milkweed and its unique place in our environment, in the wild and in our gardens. Milkweed flowers are as botanically complex as orchids and were once prized for the flavor of the honey they produced (The Milkweed Lands). If we plant native milkweeds in our gardens and parks, we will have more Monarch butterflies in our communities.
We are increasingly discovering that if we plant native plants in our gardens and parks, the populations of native bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds will find those plants, and their populations will begin to be restored (The Massachusetts Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Homegrown National Park).
Building Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration
A pollinator pathway of native plant habitat can do more than build and sustain biodiversity. It can provide a pathway to the restoration of our local environment.
Because native plants require fewer nutrients, the soil needs very little augmentation, reducing use of chemical fertilizers and thus reducing phosphorus runoff into watersheds.
Native plants have deep root systems and are generally drought tolerant, reducing the need to water them in the summer after they have become established and also reducing stormwater runoff during rainy seasons. This means that, in addition to their critical support for local biodiversity, native plants are ideal for planting in environmental projects such as rain gardens, bioswales, and riverbank restoration work to support improved water quality in our rivers and streams.