Penstemon - Pollinator Web

Musings from a Phoenix Pollinator Garden

7June22 Plants in the garden, and sharing plants from the neighbor’s garden

Most urban and suburban lots are small relative to the natural tracts of native habitat, so there are limits to what we can plant, both in size and variety.

And, it turns out, putting your yard into context with the nearest forage/host area is quite important because many insects are limited in how far they can travel for food and lodging. To some, a football field of length can push limits of mobility.

So if you are close enough to a natural area that you can leverage it’s resources, fantastic! Add one or two specimens of various native plants can still get you to critical mass if considered as shared resources with the natural area. Same goes for sharing other resources, like water and nesting habitat.

Similarly, you can view the plants and other resources in your neighbor’s yards as something to be shared by the pollinator web of animals.

The neighbor behind us has a large Sissoo tree (not a tree that I would recommend), and the birds love the height and cover it affords. Good thing, because our backyard is only 2 years old, and even our fast growing mesquite and palo verdes need a bit more time to become truly comfortable perches.

Other neighbors have citrus, hibiscus and Arizona Yellow Bells to share. Let’s look at how some of the plants in and around the garden are looking on this 109 degree day.

Desert Willow in our garden is loving the heat

Rush Milkweed in our yard is a great nectar source this time of year

Peacock Flower in our garden has come back from a cut-back in the spring

Hopbush is a great low water screening plant in our garden

The Brittlebush finished their late-winter and spring flowerings, providing much needed food

Firecracker Penstemon is still showing a will to flower, but has mostly gone to seed

Desert Marigold is in its second bloom period. Finches love the seeds

Peaking over the fence, a beautiful hibiscus (thanks neighbor)

Another shared resource, loved by hummingbirds, host to Painted Lady and Gray Hairstreak

Arizona Yellow Bells, another great nectar plant (thanks neighbor!)

And Sunflowers have turned out to be a great addition to the vegetable garden

I’ve found some interesting bees on the sunflowers, but no butterflies so far. On the non-pollinator side of things though, the sunflowers attract a wide array of insects from lace bugs, psyllids, long legged flies, assassin bugs and lady beetles! Oh, and birds eating the insects off of the leaves.

Glamorous Moths #5 – Penstemonia

The way that gardeners feel about moths and butterflies is often quite different, despite how closely related they are. We are happy to grow milkweed to attract Monarchs and allow the caterpillars to devour whole plants. Weed is in the name milkweed, so I think we value the plant more for its role in the Monarch’s life cycle. On the other hand, who ever heard of growing corn to attract Helicoverpa zea or tomatoes to encourage Manduca sexta?

Perhaps the most despised moth is the peach tree borer, which “bring major harm to important fruit-crop trees, destroying the tree’s vascular system through boring and girdling while inducing plant pathogens to invade the weakened tree” (Source). That’s terrible, right? How dare those selfish moths cripple our precious fruit trees?

Without further ado, I would like to introduce the Penstemon clearwing, also known as the Beardtongue borer.

Penstemonia clarkei, Clarke’s Penstemon clearwing, seen in Los Alamos, New Mexico

Penstemonia is a genus of moths in western North America (presumably including northern Mexico) in the family Sessiidae (clearwing moths). [Quick sidenote: Hemaris clearwing moths are in the hawk moth family, Sphingidae.]

Clearwing moths often resemble wasps and bees in coloration and marking. They have elongate wings, often transparent owing to the lack of scales. Most of the larvae are borers in the limbs, trunks, bark, or roots of trees, shrubs, herbs and vines (like the infamous peach tree borer). Some bore in galls on woody or herbaceous plants. Majority of adults take nectar. [Source: bugguide.net]

What about our Penstemon clearwing?

There are at least 5 species of Penstemonia in North America. Larval feeding is probably limited to Penstemon or closely related plant species in Cheloneae. (I’ve discussed Penstemon plants on the blog before: https://pollinatorweb.com/meet-the-plants-more-beardtongues/). The larva will be found within a stem [or roots] at crown level and damage appears as a wilting or dieback of individual stems. Pupation is probably in the soil at the base of plants, but there is no description of them. [Source: Colorado State University Extension (colostate.edu)]

I have a feeling that populations of Penstemonia moths will start to increase and spread as more gardeners grow native, drought tolerant beardtongue plants. I hope you will welcome these pollinators into your yards with open arms.

Meet the Plants: More Beardtongues

Common southwest species include Beardlip/Scarlet bugler (top row, 2nd from left), Palmer’s beardtongue (top, 3rd from right), and Rocky Mountain beardtongue (bottom row, 2nd from right).

I previously shared a few common garden Penstemon in this post. Yesterday, I was watching a talk on Penstemon by Dr. Andi Wolfe (Ohio State University) and she has some beautiful slides. Please enjoy this look at Penstemon diversity.

The shape and size of Penstemon flowers varies dramatically. Top row, second from the left, is *Penstemon barbatus*, a common wild and garden plant in Arizona and New Mexico.

Botanists use the anthers (male reproductive organs) of Penstemon flowers to classify species.

In the bottom of most Penstemon flowers is the staminode aka beardtongue. One theory states that this provides a landing platform for bees to enter the flowers.

Meet the plants: Beardtongues

Beardtongues (or Penstemon, the scientific name of the genus) are blooming again in Arizona. With over 50 wild species in Arizona and New Mexico (and more than 270 total), there’s a lot of options for our gardens. We hope you’ll pick up a few of these plants when visiting your local, native plant nursery this spring!