Fall Behind

 Looking out the dining-room window, my frequent perch, I see an abundance of color in the front yard. The bougainvillea has burst into another flush of bright magenta bracts, with their tiny, enclosed white flowers. Scarlet sage, Salvia coccinea, is blazing with impossibly red flowers. 

I tried to establish this plant unsuccessfully for years. A while back, though, one of my sisters gave me a pot of something else with a Salvia straggler, and it has spread itself throughout the back yard as well as in front. When it gets leggy and unsightly, which it does,  I either cut it back to the last green leaf, or just break off the now-brittle stems.

Scarlet Sage, Salvia coccinea

Blue-gray Eliott's love grass has peaked.Now it's drying, and its multiple seed-laden inflorescences are brittle enough to break off in the wind. They also like to work their way up your pant leg.  Pink muhly blooms later, and is also now past its prime. Its multitudinous inflorescences are somewhere between pink, purple and magenta. A clump of muhley grass by itself is a grand specimen, and it is really stunning in a mass planting, especially when there is just hint of breeze. Mounds of it billow and blow in a highway median a few miles away. 

Goldenrod, Solidago sp., has been blooming since June. Mine was a pass-along plant from a now-deceased friend in the local native plant society, who warned me, "once you have goldenrod, you'll always have goldenrod." Every time I root out another clump of suckers - goldenrod has expansionist tendencies - I remember Freda and her down-to-earth wit. Right now it is growing intermixed with a large, spreading mauve lantana, and the color combination works. I didn't plan it that way, but the goldenrod moved in on the lantana, and the 2 seem to coexist reasonably well, perhaps because the lantana stays low and the goldenrod reaches for the heights.

Florida has  19 species of goldenrod, and apart from the few that don't occur down here, I'll be damned if I can identify mine. I'm probably overthinking the process, but every time I think I am keying it out successfully I find a characteristic that nullifies it. Besides, I think they hybridize fairly promiscuously. 

"My" Goldenrod from Freda

Even though it blooms all summer here, goldenrod still seems to symbolize fall like pumpkins, asters, and fresh apples. Its numerous bright, saturated yellow-gold heads are intensely attractive to insects. Butterflies do use it in our yard, but they are far outnumbered by the wasps and bees that find it irresistible. 

In the photo above, a leaf cutter bee, Megachile sp., gathers pollen. The photo doesn't show it, but these medium-size bees collect pollen on their abdomen. I don't think the megachile in our yard is native, but I can't see that it does any harm. This species builds cylindrical egg champers in underground tunnels. It also will use holes for oarlocks and unused garden hoses. It cuts uniform oval shapes for the sides, and perfect circles to close off the egg chambers. Each compartment is about an inch long and a quarter-inch in diameter. The bee will make several chambers in each nest. It doesn't matter if the entry hole gets covered, either by shifting sand or waterborne debris. I extracted a cylinder once and kept it in a plastic dish at my workspace. All the cylinders produced an adult bee within minutes of one another. I liberated the bees after they hatched. 

Paper wasps, Polistes sp., also love the flowers. In my experience, most bees and wasps aren't particular aggressive when they are feeding. Once, though, a big bumblebee traveled from at least 6 feet away just to sting me, so I don't know what its problem was. This wasp is in no peril, but its perch reminds me of times I've had one foot on the dock and the other one on a boat that was inexorably moving away. (There is no end of entertainment watching boats come and go at a boat ramp or dock. As long as nothing tragic happens, you can laugh, but you have to remember that sooner or later it will be your turn to look stupid). 

Goldenrod flowers and leaves have been used medicinally for centuries. In fact, the genus name, Solidago, means something like "to heal or make whole." It also is a traditional dye plant. I can't speak for all species, but this one is extremely forgiving of sandy pseudo-soil and drought. Its tall spikes could be staked, but I sort of like to let it sprawl and flop. It gets beaten flat by a hard rain, but usually more or less recovers. 

Alas! All my wonderful color is in danger of being obscured by rampant weeds and overgrowth of natives I have allowed to self-sow. Now that the weather isn't quite as hot, I need to get busy  before Code Enforcement shows up. Cleaning up the yard will be a great antidote to stress from COVID and politics. The Presidential race seems decided, but the country remains as bitterly divided as ever. We all need to chill out a little and go plant something.

This post is woefully late. Sometimes life just happens. Eta scared us, but gave us a miss, though we had winds strong enough to flatten the goldenrod, coreopsis, and Elliott's asters. Most are now trying to straighten out, but I probably will have to cut the coreopsis back because its stems are so incredibly thin it's hard to imagine that they hold up a whole flower  head even in the best of circumstances.

I haven't figured out how to make links in the new Blogger format, but for more information you can refer to the posts listed below.

Native Grasses: "Yes, Florida Has Seasons." Nov.14, 2017.

Leaf  Cutter Bees: "Leaf Cutter Bees." Oct. 30, 2018.

Elliott's Aster: "Elliott's Aster." Jan. 23, 2019.

Leaf Cutter Bees

A week or so back I was delighted to see the chewed margins of this pipevine (Aristolochia sp) leaf. Chewing is usually cause for alarm in the garden, but in this case it is evidence of leaf cutter bee activity, something to be welcomed.

A Leaf Cutter Bee Was Here!

The species I see could well be native to Florida. It also could be Megachile rotunda, the "alfalfa bee," imported into the U. S. after the 1930's to: you guessed it! pollinate alfalfa fields. Honeybees are not efficient pollinators of alfalfa. This useful little critter has spread since then to much of the U.S.

The family of leaf cutter bees, Megachilidae, contains at least 2,000 species, and occurs virtually worldwide. Around 63 -75 species can be found in Florida alone. Another common leaf cutter bee, the "mason bee," Osmia sp., constructs its egg chambers with leaves and mud. Osmia bees are produced commercially and can be ordered over the Internet.

The Megachile bee is about the size of a honeybee. It does not sting unless provoked, and the sting is said to be less painful than that of a honeybee. It is somewhat chunky, with black and white bands on the abdomen and black on the upper thorax. Both sexes are generalist pollinators - they like just about everything. Only the female nests. Instead of packing pollen into leg pouches like honeybees, she carries it on the underside of her abdomen.

Megachile on Heliotropium polyphyllum 

She will nest in just about anything the right size and shape - oarlocks, unused hoses, rotten wood, hollow twigs, burrows, or manmade nesting boxes. In Florida the bees also like holes drilled in stucco for fastening hurricane shutters! Nests in underground burrows don't seem to be affected by short-term inundation, or by getting gradually filled in.

Once she has found a suitable nesting place, the female cuts a round bottom plug, and then builds up the chamber with overlapping oval pieces of leaf. She cuts  these sections out of leaf margins one at the time. She works smoothly and precisely, taking only a few seconds. She's so fast that you're lucky to catch her in action. She carries the leaf section slightly curved, under her abdomen, to her nest. I've timed a bee in action, from entrance to exit from burrow.  She takes 60 to 90 seconds to get the new leaf section in place.

Megachile Carrying Oval Leaf Section

When the chamber is complete she packs it with a mixture of nectar and chewed pollen, lays a single egg, and departs to cut the circular seal, or plug. This is when the closely related cuckoo bee. Coelioxys sp., may make her move. She crawls into the nest, and lays her egg, which will hatch and eat both pollen and competing larva.

The  Megachile bee makes a series of chambers, one atop the other. The resulting cylinder is said to resemble a cigar somewhat. It would have to be a cigar no bigger in diameter than a straw. I extracted one from an oarlock one year and kept it in a dish. After a month or so, a faint, persistent buzzing told me that something was happening, and sure enough, one bee, followed quickly by another, emerged. At this point I took the bees and the rest of the cylinder outside where they belonged.

Leaf cutter bees live only a few months. The female dies after she completes her egg-laying. The larva pupates and overwinters in the nest as an adult until it emerges in the spring.

Megachile on Goldenrod

If you're trying to grow a prize rose or dahlia for exhibition, the leaf cutter bee could be a nuisance. Otherwise, since they are solitary, not part of a colony, the damage they do is minimal, and I think just adds interest.

There is a wealth of information on the Internet about leaf cutter bees. The Honeybee Conservancy site has great info, pictures and video. Click the following link to get to the site. leaf cutter bee. The University of Florida also has a good article. Go to edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in619. Another of my favorite sites is from the BeeInformed organization. https://beeinformed.org/2014/07/30/alfalfa-leafcutter-bee-.

Megachile Work on Gopher Apple, Licania michauxii

Honeybees  have the reputation of being the best crop pollinators, but that is not necessarily the case. Our native bees are vital in the pollination of crops, ornamentals and our native flora. I don't know whether the one in my yard is a native or the imported alfalfa bee, but either way it is more than welcome.