With brightly colored petals, enticing landing spots, and sweetly scented nectar, these native plants lure bees, butterflies, birds, and beetles to a tantalizing feast.
By Ashleigh Jones
In their bumbling, buzzy hurry to get to the good stuff, pollinators are sprinkled with pollen and carry it with them as they visit other plants nearby, enabling the plants to reproduce. These pollinator plants are true crowd pleasers!
Pitcher Plant
Sarracenia Species
Location: Kaul Wildflower Garden, Bog Garden,
Garden Lab
The pitcher plant is a herbaceous perennial. While it is a carnivorous plant, it needs insects like bees to pollinate its flowers which hang up high on tall stems. The pitcher plant’s flower hangs upside down, forming an umbrella-like structure with five hooked stigmas, and five petals covering the style’s openings like a curtain.
Once the bee passes through the petal entryway, it can’t exit the same way. This clever trap helps the pitcher plant avoid self-pollination, which is less advantageous. The bee bumbles around inside, looking for nectar, and takes a different exit. This interaction between plant and bee helps to cross-pollinate with other plants and promotes genetic diversity.
Eastern Red Columbine
Aquilegia canadensi
Location: Garden Lab, Kaul Wildflower Garden
Eastern Red Columbine is a perennial wildflower. It can grow to three feet tall and has drooping, tubular, bell-shaped flowers that attract ruby-throated hummingbirds, which insert their long beaks to drink the nectar inside.
The plant gets its genus name, Aquilegia, from the Latin “aquila,” meaning “eagle,” because its spurred flowers resemble an eagle’s talons. Bees, butterflies, and hawk moths also pollinate these flowers.
Big Leaf Magnolia
Magnolia macrophylla
Location: Southern Living Garden, Kaul Wildflower Garden
This tree has the largest simple leaves and the largest flowers of any North American tree. Its creamy-white flowers can be 8 to 14 inches in diameter, with a rose-purple color at the petal bases. Magnolias are evolutionarily ancient and grew at a time before bees became major pollinators.
Since beetles were more prevalent back then, magnolia flowers emitted a blend of musky, spicy, and overripe scents to attract them. The large, bowl-shaped structure of the flower is also more suited to crawling insects rather than those that hover.
Spotted Bee Balm
Monarda punctata
Location: Kaul Wildflower Garden, Garden Lab
Bee balm is a native herbaceous perennial ranging from 6 inches to nearly 3 feet tall. Blooming from April to October, its tubular, yellow flowers are speckled purple and arranged in whorls. As the name suggests, bee balm attracts many types of bees as well as hummingbirds and butterflies.
Dense Blazing Star
Liatris spicata
Location: Kaul Wildflower Garden
A slender perennial reaching 2 to 6 feet, this plant features flower clusters arranged on a single stem, making it especially attractive to pollinators. Native to the eastern United States, this plant blooms from July to August and attracts birds, butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees. Native bees will also nest in its hollow stems after the plant dies or goes dormant, so don’t cut it back too far.