What do you see when looking at flowers? Hopefully, you see visiting pollinators like bumble bees. You may notice butterflies flitting about. Maybe honey bees too? These bigger insects draw our attention. But if those pollinators are there, there are more! They’re just smaller, or not as numerous, so harder to find. I tell people this, but is it true? Being curious (and a scientist by education), I created a project for myself.
I watched a mass of a single goldenrod species in my yard for over a week, and photographed every insect I could. The amazing diversity and activity surprised even me! I’ll tell you a little more about the project and the goldenrod, but first up are the results.
This relatively rare bee (Protandrena genus) was a new find on our property.
What Did I Spy?
An amazing 120+ species of wildlife! Bees, flies, butterflies, moths, true bugs, wasps, beetles, and more!
Pollinators represented the majority of visitors (>100 species). Being late in the season, the quantity and diversity was particularly amazing. The obvious big pollinators were bumblebees and honeybees. Flies were the most numerous of the insect orders—yes FLIES. While we had a number of butterfly species, they preferred New England and Aromatic Asters. Moths mostly appeared at dusk when temperatures weren’t too cold.
Predators are always present wherever pollinators are found. I only saw a few of the typical predators – just one each of assassin bug, ambush bug, and spider. But there were plenty of wasps and flies that not only are pollinators themselves, but also capture or parasitize other pollinators to feed their larvae. Yellowjackets were abundant. They’re flying bullies, knocking into insects and carrying off those they capture to take to their nests to feed young. It happens so fast it’s hard to see!
Plus, there were plant-feeding insects that use parts of the plant other than the flowers for food, like the mirid plant bugs and spittlebugs.
The Eastern Calligrapher was one of at least 15 species of Flower Flies. Most are mimics of bees and wasps.
Making Observations
The ‘Fireworks’ Goldenrod (more about the plant to follow) started blooming on September 13th, and pollinator activity continued until October 5th. The big pollinators first caught my attention on Sept 20th. The flowers were full of bumblebees and honeybees. On that day we saw butterflies—a migrant White M butterfly, and my husband, Gary, found a Red-banded Hairstreak. For days, this heightened activity of the big pollinators kept going. But that’s all I saw. Finally, on Sept 24th, I decided to do as I suggest to others—spend time looking closer.
I initially planned to spend only an hour focusing small and photographing everything. But I couldn’t pull myself away. Once you start to look for small stuff, they pop out at you. I quickly realized that an entire ecosystem of wildlife interactions had evolved within the goldenrod. I kept revisiting the plants until pollinator activity was done, and Gary joined the project finding some species I didn’t see.
Here’s the species distribution, led by flies. I didn’t measure abundance, but that was probably led by a few bee and wasp species, while butterfly and moth representation was mostly individuals.
What do you spy?
Test your observation skills. Do you spy 6 things? Here's a (1) yellowjacket with a (2) Cobalt fly prey, (3) a native bee on left, (4) a tiny fly blowing bubbles, (5) dried spittle upper right, and (6) a thread of spider silk. (Key at the end.)
Identification and Citizen Science
Next came the work to sort through images and identify what we’d photographed. I’m fortunate to have learned many of these insects over the years, and Gary knows some better than me. We also received identifications from experts at Bugguide.net. Some insects cannot be identified by photo, so to do my species count I relied on unique features.
Gary and I also added our images as Observations to iNaturalist. To learn more about iNaturalist, check out my article, “iNaturalist as a Game and Serious Database.” You can use the Explore feature in iNaturalist to view data even if you don’t have an account. To see how people participate in the identification of species, you can view my profile here and select observations.
As a note – these insects were likely already in our yard, but were concentrated at this small grouping of plants because of the abundant nectar. We maintain a continuous native-plant source blooming in our yard from early spring until frost.
About Goldenrod ‘Fireworks’
The plant responsible for this abundance of fall nectar to attract these pollinators was Goldenrod ‘Fireworks.’ It’s a commercially available cultivar of Wrinkle-leaved Goldenrod (Solidago rugosa) known for its dense, plume-like flowering branches of small bright yellow flowers. Not only is this a garden-worthy cultivar from my experience, but it received Best All Around Goldenrod status for the Mid-Atlantic from Mt. Cuba goldenrod trials! While cultivars sometimes have reduced pollinator value (compared to straight species plants) in exchange for human preferred traits, that does not appear to be an issue with ‘Fireworks.’ Goldenrods are important plants for late-season pollinators, but often avoided because of the incorrect perception that they’re weeds that cause allergies (it’s actually ragweed that causes all the trouble).
Here you can see the long plumes of yellow flowers.
Hopefully I’ve encouraged you to work past the big bees and butterflies to take a closer look at your native flowers, starting now. And don’t forget to look at dusk for moths.
Karen Campbell, a member of Lehigh Valley Audubon, PA Master Naturalist and Certified Pollinator Steward, provided the content and images for this article. Follow Karen on Instagram @kareninnature or visit her website at focusonnatives.com.
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