Mid-July is usually the time that we can count on some colorful prairie blooms in Minnesota, and this year certainly hasn’t disappointed. With a lot of spring rain and mild temperatures, prairie plants are putting on quite a show.
A prairie bouquet of Monarda, Hairy Vetch, white Yarrow, and a Black-eyed Susan.
Orange accents from the Butterfly weed added a lot of color.
A very healthy purple prairie clover plant put up a number of flowering stems.
Black-eyed Susans find a little sunlight in the dense patch of prairie grasses.
Only a very few insects were actually utilizing all that pollen and nectar provided by the prairie blooms. A rare bumblebee worked the Black-eyed Susans.
Even the Blue Vervain, usually a favorite of bees because of its rich nectar, was free of insects.
Most prairie plants can reproduce by sending up new shoots from their underground rhizome, and there is usually a rich seed bank from previous years of seed fall to offset years when there is low pollinator activity. This is beginning to look like the “year of no bees”.
Back Yard Biology 