Cornwall Life – October 2019

Cornwall Life: August 2019Š 37

to attract wildlife to your garden

Look carefully and you can
often see this small hole in their
flowers.
In this fair trade, the
Honeysuckle can produce
those gloriously translucent
and glowing winter berries that
are not only crucial food for
our hedgerow and farmland
bird species at a time of year
when otherwise food is scarce,
but the berries have actually
evolved to be tasty to birds and
some mammals, but poisonous
to others, and need to travel
through an animal’s gut to
germinate (with an added
dollop of fertiliser at the base
of a hedgerow – just the most
perfect place for a new climbing
Honeysuckle plant).

SEDUM
While we have our own native
sedums, such as the brilliantly
named Biting Stonecrop, I am
thinking the big showy cultivars

for your garden design and your

flowerbeds.

Sedum (or ice plant as they

are sometimes called) is one of

the plants that do amazingly

well in extending the flowering

season into later autumn and

early winter. They are only

outcompeted for their value

to insects in this way by our

Cornish Atlantic Ivy, upon which

whole native ecological webs

have their foundation or rely

on. As I write this in late June,

mine have not even started to

bud and create their amazing

flat and yarrow-like flowerheads

yet, so will be there and opening

their tiny flowers for butterflies

and bees well after most other

garden plants’ flowering seasons

are over.

DOG ROSE

I am thinking shamelessly of

bumblebees again. Many bee

and fly species cannot work out

how to get at the energy packed

pollen hidden tantalisingly close

in the open pale-pink flowers

of Dog Rose. They are held in

upward-facing flasks and won’t

budge if you rock or invert the

flower. What they have been

designed for is bumblebees

and their clever trick of ‘buzz

pollination’. Many species of

bumblebee can unhook their

flight muscles from the wings.

When they flex their muscles,

the bee can warm up – a clever

trick indeed for a cold-blooded

creature, but one that means

some bumblebee species can

be awake and actively collecting

pollen and nectar well before

you have even had you first

cup of morning tea and before

any Honey Bee or hoverfly can

drain the plants’ fruits of the day.

Clever, but in doing the same

flexing of muscles, a bumblebee

can hold on to a Dog Rose

flower, when positioned

perfectly underneath, and shake

the pollen free of the flasks –

creating a shower of delicious

calorific pollen that coats the

bee. This is one of the reasons

why bumbles are hairy – to catch

buzzed pollen and allow them to

sweep it into their pollen baskets

on their back legs (as well as

keeping them warm and helping

them carry commensal parasites

hitching a ride & that help keep

the nest tidy). The Dog Rose

as it ages and becomes woody

forms a hollow core to its stems,

upon which a veritable rainforest

of species of insect depend in

which to breed and to spend

winters. In short a rose arch or

hedge in your garden alive with

loud buzzing and spangled

with Robin’s Pincushion (a

gall formed by a solitary wasp

that farms Dog Rose for its

vulnerable young) is a joy to

behold. My favourite plant of all.

What they have

been designed

for is bumblebees

and their clever

trick of ‘buzz

pollination’

Dog roses are especially loved

by bumblebees

A honeybee fills up on pollen

from a sedum bloom

GARDENS

Ewen MacDonald

Photos: Getty Images/iStockphoto: Alex 1910, Neva F, Peter Etchells, Kateryna Ovcharenko, Michal Boubin