#aster with pollinators

[whatnext10]

Colorful Climbing Asters Attract All Types of Little Pollinators

Aster and Skipper Climbing asters (Ampelaster carolinianus) are one of the most common and beautiful fall blooming flowers that grow in our wetlands. As their name implies, they love to climb anything that they get near, so come fall, there are carpets of bright pink flowers covering fences, trees, other shrubs, and even patches of ground if there is nothing to climb. And covering all those…

[thomas--bombadil]

White Heath Aster starts to bloom now. Bees busily harvest its pollen.

But there is a melancholy to this flower. It's one of the very last things which bloom in the Midwest.

Soon, everything in the forest will start to die and nothing new will come until the spring.

[throughthemeadowflowers]

Chicago Botanic Garden, September

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Saturday 30 September 2023

A clump-forming perennial Symphyotrichum 'Prairie Sky' has small pinky mauve flowerheads with centres that have a paler shading. The flowers were popular with the local bees.

Jill Raggett

[faguscarolinensis]

Vanessa cardui on Aster ageratoides / Painted Lady on Balsam Aster at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

[indigrassy]

Beez in the trap

🐞🍂🐛 also find me on instagram and ko-fi! 🌻🦋🐝

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

I posted some pictures of bumble bees on the New England asters

[susiestamps]

US 2017 Honey Bee on New England Aster

[verysmallaminal]

starting a horticulture program and rapidly learning that mainstream hort culture sees plants as toys, decoration, and maybe food sometimes, and not as living things that exist as part of an ecosystem to whom we have a responsibility as a species. it’s very uncomfortable

[mmwm]

OCTOBER BLOOM DAY 2023

[petirrojo57]

Still lots to enjoy even if the autumnal equinox is just around the corner!

[whatnext10]

Sharing Can Often Be a Great Thing

Crescent and Bee Last week on my way home I discovered a beautiful climbing aster bush on the banks of the Wacassassa River. When I stopped to take some photos of it, I realized that not only was it loaded with flowers, but those flowers were loaded with pollinators. There were tons of bees and wasps, which I expected, but I was surprised to discover quite a few butterflies, too. It’s getting…

[1000-year-old-virgin]

Need help growing Wildflowers

I got some Native Wildflower seeds from the city to support pollinators but the packet has a QR code for the instructions.

So annoying! Not everyone has a QR reader readily available to them.

I'll assume it's too late in the year to plant them anyway (It's July now).

Packet contains:

Common Milkweed

Lance-leaved Coreopsis

Sweet Joe Pye Weed

Sneezeweed

Sweet Ox-Eye

Evening Primrose

Grey-headed Coneflower

Stiff Goldenrod

Arrow-leaved Aster

Hoary Vervain

[cognitivejustice]

Tending a garden is about as hands-on as climate solutions get. On a basic level, putting plants in the ground helps sequester carbon. Vegetation can reduce stress and tension for the humans around it, and it provides habitat and sustenance for pollinators and other wildlife. Gardens can provide spaces for education, and, of course, sources of food. But the act of designing and planting a green space serves another, more metaphorical purpose: It gives the gardener agency over a piece of the world and what they want it to look like — and a role in conveying of all those aforementioned benefits.

That’s the premise behind Wild Visions, a challenge launched in the DMV area (that’s District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, for the uninitiated) in January. The project invited university students to design gardens with all sorts of visions and themes, then bring them to fruition this spring with native seedlings from Garden for Wildlife — an offshoot of the National Wildlife Federation.

For every plant the company sells, it donates one to a community project, said campus engagement lead Rosalie Bull. This spring, around 2,000 went to Wild Visions.

“We’ll be creating in total nearly 6,000 square feet of new wildlife habitat in the DMV,” Bull said. “And that’s just this year. We hope to do it year after year.”

In Bull’s view, this project has a distinctly solarpunk framing — celebrating a literary genre and art movement that conjures visions of a sustainable future, where nature is as central as technology. Although part of the goal was to get more native flowers in the ground, the challenge also hoped to “activate the solarpunk imagination,” and let students offer their perspectives on what the gardens could accomplish.

For instance, a group called Latinos en Acción from American University wanted to focus on monarch butterfly habitat, as a symbol of the migrant justice movement. Others, like the Community Learning Garden at the University of Maryland, were interested in exploring culinary uses of the plants they received, which included sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, milkweed, goldenrod, and aster.

[faguscarolinensis]

Bombus impatiens on Aster tataricus 'Jin Dai' / Common Eastern Bumblebee on 'Jin Dai' Tartarian Aster at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

[indigrassy]

Buzzing around the asters