Summer Joy! California Fuchsias and Bees

The California "Moonglow" poppies have ceded the stage and the California Fuchsias are having their moment. Known also as Epilobium canum, these have the common name of 'fuchsia' as the flower form is reminiscent of the imported plant by that name.  

These plants are powerhouses in the garden, blooming from late July into October, and feeding White Lined Sphinx moth caterpillars (in my sister-in-law's garden) and a variety of bees. I had originally planted just one of these plants to try it out, and as soon as it bloomed, a hummingbird appeared. After drinking from its meager 12 blossoms, the hummingbird zoomed over to me, hovered in front of my face as if to say "plant more!"  I wound up adding 5 more and am so glad that I did. The hummingbirds visit this frequently and it is a favorite with the bees.

Even late in the day the blossoms seem to glow and draw a lot of comments from neighbors and other passer-by. A troop of Girl Scouts toured the garden one afternoon, and some stayed behind to collect seeds. Luckily I had some extra empty packets handy. 

The seeds pop open and are held in place briefly by their 'fluff'. I learned quickly that the trick to harvesting is to keep your hand around the pod, and nip it off the stem with your thumbnail. Trying to tear the pod off the stem severs it as they snap easily and this wastes the unripened pods further up the stem. 

The European honeybees crawl all the way in the flower and completely disappear. There were typically 15-20 buzzing around at any given moment. As I was harvesting seeds, they'd sense my presence and fly over to another area on the plant. We worked quite closely together but were careful to respect each other's space. It was actually quite relaxing to hear all of their humming and buzzing. 

I believe this tiny bee is a Tripartite Sweat Bee, based on information on iNaturalist.org. I noticed that the European honeybees dominated most of the mature flowers, but this little bee could fit into flowers that were barely opened, or sip nectar from a flower bud.

It was such a challenge to photograph this tiny sweat bee as it was so small and very quick. It was nice to see some bee diversity in the garden, though. It seems that with each new California native plant that I introduce into the garden, a new crop of bees and other insects show up. That is very exciting and I can't wait to see what the next phase will bring!

                                Hummingbird with Epilobium canum (c) Ann Parsons (CC-BY-NC)

I could never seem to capture a picture of the hummingbirds when they visited these plants, which was frequently.  But just so you can visualize how much these birds love these flowers, I'm including a beautiful image from iNaturalist.org taken by Ann Parsons, with copyright information, above.  Enjoy!

May Moonglow

 

Back in February I scattered some California native Moonglow Poppy seeds along the front border. I hoped they'd bloom in time for the April 2 Growing Natives Garden Tour, but with the colder weather, they didn't actually bloom until early May. But oh what a beautiful show - well worth the wait!  

The poppies lit up the border, and provided visual interest running parallel to the Catalina Perfume (Ribes viburnifolium) that is still maturing. 

Their luminescence really lit up this area that is dappled shade all morning and full sun all afternoon and evening. 

As I looked closely at the poppies, I noticed tiny bees that I hadn't seen in the garden before. 

I believe they are Arizona Small Carpenter Bees, but I'm waiting for confirmation from iNaturalist.org. But the important thing is that, with each new element I add to the garden, a new species emerges and seems to desperately need these precious native plant resources.  It feels wonderful to see the immediate impact of these plants, and feel that I'm doing my part to support them.

Still Life

The land we live on is a small patch of coastal scrub in San Carlos, California. When we moved here in 2007, it looked like a picture from a magazine, with Japanese maples, Chilean jasmine, French (via China) roses, all kept in a tidy corral by an English Box hedge (from southern Europe). 

But the garden was just that, a picture. A "still life." The plants were picture perfect, tidy and pruned. They would have fed the ecosystems in their native countries, but here, far from the insects they co-evolved with, they were simply pretty objects for us to look at.  Our gardener came and meticulously clipped the plants, mowed the lawn and aerated it. He clipped seed heads from our Mexican sage and kept things looking, well, picture perfect.  

Before: Our garden as a "still life" picture, with imported 

plants, providing no food for local ecosystems.

But as it turns out, this picture has a very steep price. 

My husband and I were so busy working that it did not occur to us that there was something seriously wrong with our 'picture garden'. This all changed in 2020 when things slowed down a bit during the pandemic. We started to spend more time in the garden and wondered why there wasn't more life there.  

The French word for a still life painting is "nature morte" or "dead nature" and I think this best describes gardens like ours - filled with imported plants that do not feed anything. Our garden seemed nice, but it was a food desert to the starving bees, butterflies, salamanders, birds and mammals. These species have been here for thousands of years and co-evolved with native plants so that they are specialized to eat certain ones. like monarch caterpillars eating only milkweed. But my house and imported garden replaced their habitat. When we multiply this by the vast number of gardens like ours across the country and the globe, these food deserts quickly become a starving planet.  

A Western Monarch nectars on a Showy Milkweed 

shortly before laying eggs on it. The monarch and 

this plant co-evolved together and it is the only food 

source for caterpillars for this butterfly and for the 

Queen butterfly as well.

So, in the fall of 2020, we decided to turn this around. We added native 'keystone' plants to our garden first. These are the plants that support the greatest number of caterpillars as these are the biggest converters of plant material to the entire remaining food chain. Native local varieties of buckwheat, manzanita, ceanothus, coffeeberry, currants, gooseberries, filled our garden.  During this first year, we started noticing a wider variety of bees and butterflies visiting the flowers. 

Common Checkered Skipper resting on sage seed heads, 

after spending her caterpillar stage on native mallow. 

As we worked, we also discovered that our landscape was not entirely 'dead.'  A massive Valley Oak produced acorns and leaves that fed mammals and insects alike. But we had not realized that in the past, we'd been working against nature through our obsessive tidiness.  As soon as the insect laden leaves, acorns, and small branches landed on the ground we would sweep them up and put them in the green bin. As our bounty was hauled off to create methane in landfills, our local birds starved. The insects, especially caterpillars, are the only foods their babies can eat. 

As soon as we learned this, we started leaving the leaves. The biodiversity exploded!  In addition to bee and butterfly diversity, we noticed moths of all sizes. There was even a humorous moment as I tried to capture a short video of an elusive but colorful one, resulting in a 'high speed chase' through the thick blanket of leaves. It escaped its opportunity for fame. With the moths came a wider variety of birds. We had never seen western bluebirds in our neighborhood before but here they were, scouting out nesting sites in our oak and foraging for insects among the leaves. Hummingbirds visited the flowers for nectar, and hovered around the oak, flicking their long tongues to catch gnats in the air (80% of their diet is protein from insects).

Lesser Black Letter Moth pupa and adult. 

Both need leaf litter and debris to overwinter 

and both provide food for baby and adult birds. 

We left the acorns on the ground, and they were eaten by deer, blue jays and woodpeckers. Acorns also provided food for three orphaned baby racoons that moved into a hollow part of the oak's trunk and a squirrel family in a hollow limb.  I gathered some acorns to start new trees to give away, but had to choose carefully as insects would bore into them immediately, again providing food that would move its way up the ecosystem. 

A young orphaned racoon finds a home and food sources

 in the embrace of a Valley Oak (Quercus lobata). 

Note that the leaves are from a soon-to-be removed 

Japanese maple that grew next to the oak, but has no wildlife value.

Now, as we enter our third year of embracing this new, yet ancient, way of gardening we look out our window and see something quite different.  It is not a static still life, but rather a living breathing and excitingly vibrant vision - a "nature vivante" that is teeming with life.

Learn more about habitat gardening here:

Habitat Revolution - California Native Plant Society (cnps.org)

Some SF Bay Area Resources:

Gardening (cnps-scv.org)

Gardening info « Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour

Design your garden here:

Calscape - Bay Area Garden Planner

Handy Habitat Checklist:

NWF_Garden-Certification-Checklist.ashx

Ahhh, sit back and enjoy the birdsong - so much nicer than our old boring lawn!