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[upbeat music] 'Kay, welcome, everyone. So glad you could make it. I am Nate Walton, MSU Extension, Consumer Horticulture Instructor. Here again, for our second installation of Pollinator Fridays. It's the four-part series that's going until June 12th, although there is a bonus on the following Friday, June 19th, with Dr. Duke Elsner. Dr. Duke is gonna talk about Captivating Caterpillars. It should be a really excellent presentation. He's spent many years studying our caterpillars here in Michigan, and is very knowledgeable about that. So keep that on your calendars. I'll bring that up again later on. Today, we're gonna talk about trees, trees for birds, bees, and butterflies. I have the Q and A going in the chat as well, and I'm gonna try to do a little more interaction this week. You should be able to chat, and the panelists, myself, and my assistant, Annette Kleinschmidt, who is helping moderate today. She's our Office Manager in the County MSU Extension Office. You might hear Annette's voice from time to time, letting me know that everything's going well, or if there's a really great question in the chat for me. So we're gonna talk about trees, and about how they can be beneficial for these different kinds of organisms. This is Pollinator Friday. So there's gonna be an emphasis on pollinator and pollination, how trees can help pollinators. Because pollinators are extremely important for all these different reasons. And this poster is from pollinator.org, the North American Pollinator Partnership, and I would encourage you to visit their website, and take a closer look at this image. They have a interactive version of it that you can click on and learn about all the different ways that pollinators help us, sequester carbon, control erosion, cycle nutrients. Today, we're gonna talk about pollination and how pollinators can be a resource for wildlife as well. This is all to get you amped up for Pollinator Week. Pollinator Week comes up in June, June 22nd to 28th, this year. And this is an international event, and there's lots of fun things you'll be able to do online to participate, things you can do in your backyard to participate. And so keep your eyes out for great Pollinator Week activities. So, first I just wanna make sure everybody's on the same page as far as what is a pollinator. And to do that this week, I have this brief video I wanna show you of a pollinator in action. Apologize for the joltiness of it. I [mumbles] my tripod. So let's watch this. This is a bee. This is a miner bee, it's M-I-N-E-R, from the family Andrenidae. This is one of our most common early spring bees. As she's moving around from flower to flower, you can see she has pollen on her legs, and she's gathering it from the flower. This is the male flower part that she's gathering pollen from, packing it onto her body. She's also picking up pollen inadvertently on the fur, the hairs on body, and she is, while she's doing that, she's gonna be, some of that pollen, she's gonna groom herself and pick up off of her body. But some of that pollen she's going forget about or it's gonna wind up on the female part of these flowers. The female parts of these flowers are kind of in the center. You can see one here. Okay, that's the stigma at the end where the pollen gets stuck to. And you might notice that some of the flowers have these anthers with pollen on them. They're kind of brown, orangish in this picture. But some of them, the anthers are kind of dried up already. Okay, and those, you might have noticed she visited this flower thinking it might have pollen on it, but it didn't. But it did have a stigma and so it picked up some of that pollen from her body. And so one of the things that's really important in pollination is you probably noticed she moved from flower to flower. So she's getting pollen from one flower, in the same tree, to another flower on the same tree. And in many species, that will result in pollination, the production of viable seed. In some plants, they need, she would need to take that pollen to another plant. So they can't, they're not receptive to pollen from their own flowers. But because bees are so good at moving around like that from flower to flower, they focus on gathering pollen, they gather a lot of pollen to feed their offspring, so they are really good pollinators. So they're one of the most effective pollinators. But in order to be a pollinator, you don't have to be a bee. You can do it as a, a fly, a beetle. All it really requires is that you pick up pollen and transfer it from one flower to the other, and it could be by accident, certainly. Human beings can be pollinators. Some of our, some of our food crops, we are actually pollinators, and when we're breeding plants in particular. Humans are pollinators of those plants so we can be in control of what pollen goes where. So what are our insect pollinators in Michigan? We definitely have butterflies and moths visiting flowers and transferring pollen. The bee is extremely important. Flies as well. You may not realize how important flies are. If you start looking at flowers this summer, keep track of how many things you see there that, that uh, that aren't bees or wasps or butterflies, but maybe something else like a fly. We also see beetles, definitely. A lot of beetles visit flowers. Many of them are actually really tied to the flower as part of the life cycle. They'll have this black and yellow coloration, which protects them because it makes them look like something like a bee or a wasp, which predators are, are wary of because they can get stung by a bee or a wasp. But these beetles don't have stingers, but the coloration protects them from predators. And there are lots of other insects that visit flowers. This is a little bit of a blurry picture, but I like showing it. Does anybody wanna put in the chat if they know what kind of insect this is? Give you a minute. [Sips from mug] It's not something most people think of as a flower visitor. Mostly think of it as something that might be under their kitchen cupboards. Yes, it's a cockroach. Someone put it into the chat. Good job. This is one of our smaller non-pest cockroaches. You know, this is a, one that's just out there in nature, part of the scavenger community, and not really hurting anybody. So, okay, that's pollinators. What's the big deal about trees? Why are we talking about trees today? Well, we, course we all know that trees have a lot of great benefits. They provide shade, control erosion. There's plenty of benefits to humans from having trees around. But what are they doing for our pollinators? Well, they certainly provide flowers. This is an apple tree out on the National Park at Sleeping Bear, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore. And this is one of those great old apple trees that, some people might find a little unsightly, but I think they're really charming. And they just put on so many flowers in the spring. And those early spring flowers that some of our fruit trees have, many of our other landscape trees have, are really important for our early season pollinators. And also for our social pollinators like bumble bees and honey bees. 'Cause there's not a lot of flowers in the landscape at that time, and they really need to get their reproduction cycle going. So that's one thing, they provide flowers. They also provide leaves, and those leaves are food for little critters like this. This is a leaf roller. Now our fruit growers wouldn't be too happy to have one of these chewing the tender young leaves on their fruit trees, but most of our landscape plants can tolerate some of this damage. And these leaf rollers are caterpillars so they're gonna turn into a moth. Other kinds of caterpillars that we might have on our, feeding on our foliage and our landscape trees are gonna turn into butterflies. And these are really important now because they will turn into moths and butterflies and be pollinators, but also because they're food for wildlife. In particular our song birds need to eat a lot of little caterpillars as they're breeding. So our fruit trees provide flowers, they also provide food for our songbirds, and to be honest those songbirds are probably eating some bees too and other pollinators. That's just bound to happen. Can't really blame 'em, but it's part of the circle of life. Food for wildlife, but also food for pollinators like trees. So trees are really helpful for the wildlife, and they're good for us too. I'm gonna focus on these two groups. Obviously, the top is birds, bees, and butterflies. So we're gonna talk about bees and butterflies and moths today. Those are our major insect pollinators in Michigan, particularly the bees. Of course, this is the European Honey Bee, Apis melifera, the number one bee in the world for pollination. There are some sister species to Apis melifera that I should include here as well. But those honey bees are really important to for our food system, and I don't wanna forget to talk about them. Luckily, most of the plants that are beneficial to our wild bees are also beneficial to our managed bees like the honey bee. Our bumble bees, these are a, a native species to our area. There are about a dozen bumble bees that are pollinators in Michigan. Globally, they are definitely a very important crop pollinator. They're even managed in Michigan, actually some producers use bumble bees to pollinate their tomatoes or some of our spring crops like blueberry. They're really great pollinators, especially for our plants that are native to this area 'cause they're well-adapted to pollinate during the weather conditions that when the plants are blooming and handling those flowers, honey bees aren't quite as adept at handling and getting pollen from. Now, I wanna take a moment here to talk about bumble bees because I mentioned a moment ago that spring flowers are really important for bumble bees and other pollinators, and this is one of the reasons why. In the springtime, this is right around now is when bumble bee queens are really getting their colonies going, at least in Northern Michigan. I suppose in the southern parts of the state, if some of you are listening in from there, this would have started a while ago. But, you start to see those big bumble bees buzzing around and they are queens because none of the other bumble bees from last year's nests, none of those made it through the winter. Only the queen overwinters. So we have all these queens now, and they are trying to make a new nest, and they are looking for nests. They'll find a place to nest, and they will start to lay eggs. And to get the energy to produce those eggs, the protein and fats that they need, they go to flowers for pollen. And they also feed that pollen to the developing workers. Once they have enough workers going, the workers take over the job of foraging, and you won't see those queens buzzing around anymore, they'll stay in the nest. Later on, in the summer, the bumble bee colony now has probably 60, max of about 80, workers. For most of our bumble bees in Michigan, probably fewer than that. But they build up that colony to about 60 workers throughout the summer, and then produce a mating generation, males and females. Those females are gonna be the next generation of queens that come out the following spring, and everybody else, the males and the workers, are not gonna make it through the winter. But those queens overwinter, and then again, have to come out next spring. As soon as the temperatures are warm enough, they're gonna start looking for food. And that's where those spring flowering plants come into play. This is a little snapshot of a bunch of other wild bees that we have in Michigan. We have about 450 plus species that have been recorded here in Michigan that are wild bees, native wild bees. And this kind of shows you when they might be active in the season. So we have these spring bees that come out. Those are the miner bees, which I showed you one in the video. Our cellophane bees, which are really similar to miner bees, both of those nest in the soil. Our mason bees, which are the ones that I'll talk about in a couple of weeks when I talk about bee hotels. And then we have our all season bees like bumble bees, sweat bees, and carpenter bees. And these do come out in the spring, at least the bumble bees and the sweat bees are pretty common early spring bees. The queens are looking to build a colony up, the sweat bees are kinda getting their first generation going. They're more solitary, most of them. But some of them are somewhat social, so they will kind of build a colony. And then they're active all season long so they'll have multiple generations of sweat bees through the summer. And then we have our later bees, like our leaf-cutter bees, our squash bees that pollinate squash plants, and some of these other bees. So it's really important to provide resources for these pollinators if we're trying to conserve their populations. And that means some of the most important times to have flowers is early in the season and late in the season. There's limited resources available at those times of year. As you can see, we have two bees competing for pollen here on a willow. And willow is a really important early spring plant for bees and other insects. And it's one of the first sources of pollen in the landscape. Willows don't actually need pollinators. They're wind-pollinated. But interestingly enough, there are bees that are adapted to solely live off of pollen from willow plants. So whether the willows need it or not, they have insect pollinators. And then late in the season, of course, goldenrod. We're all pretty familiar with seeing those giant yellow patches of goldenrod in the fall. Just for fun, I couldn't resist showing this 'cause I talked about all the different kinds of insect pollinators. We have, and this was on the same day last fall in goldenrod. And again, if I'd like to use the chat for you to all to have a little fun with this. How many different insect, kinds of insects can you see here? And if you can, if you know what they are, go ahead and tell me what they are. Are there any beetles in this picture? Five different kinds. Somebody says moth, bees, and fly. Five or six. Well, I guess it depends on how specific you wanna be. And if we're talking about insect orders, there are one, two, three, four. This one up here is a beetle, and this one down here is another beetle. So this really cool black and yellow one is a locust borer. It's a beetle. Up here, we have a wasp, our native paper wasp. Down here is our European honey bee. So that's a bee. And then this one over here is a lepidoptera, so you can call that a moth. You can see it has this kind of a proboscis it's using, a straw, to get nectar from those goldenrod flowers. But we're not really here to talk about fall plants. This is an older publication that is still very useful, the MSU Extension put out many years ago. But I wanted to bring it up because it shows this kind of seasonal variation in flowering plants, and it's really important to have flowering plants all year for these pollinators. Our spring ones though, you might notice there are some trees here. I'm gonna talk about a couple of these trees later on and are really important for pollinators, like black cherries and willows. So I've been talking about bees a little too much probably. Let's step back and talk about butterflies a little bit. So, the, the order that butterflies are in are lepidoptera, butterflies, moths, and skippers, and they do visit a lot of flowers, and they're generally considered pollinators. It's fair. But some of them, for example this red-spotted purple down here, this one, as you can see, is not on a flower. It's on some mulch, and it's probably drinking some salts or who knows what, kinda getting some moisture from there. They don't feed as adults. They mostly are just gonna be mating and laying eggs. Of course many of our little ones do and their bodies do have some fur on them so they pick up pollen and they do pollinate. But butterflies in general are, are they're not as good of pollinate as our bees 'cause they're not collecting pollen. They're just collecting nectar which is sugary water, it's not really involved in reproduction of these plants and they're not as focused on using the same kinds of plants they're not pollinating as well as our bees do. Moths though, often are overlooked and are really good at pollinating with furrier bodies. This one up here is one of our bumble bee hawk moths and these actually, not this species, but we've been having quite a few reports of hawk moths on flowers on lilacs up here in the Traverse City area, I had one in my yard the other day, so look out for those. So I think in the term of Lepidoptera pollinators you should be thinking more about the moths than probably the big (mumbles) done justice to that. When Dr. Elsner in a few weeks does that captivating caterpillars, we could probably talk about that as well. And what about birds? Well I am not a bird fan, I'm the farthest thing from a bird expert, I don't really (chuckles) you can imagine, I know that they eat insects and some other things about them. But as far as pollination of birds, that birds do, we do have bird pollinators in Michigan, I should probably say bird pollinator. It's the ruby-throated hummingbird. I don't know if there are any ornithologists, or birders out there who are getting angry at me right now, but go ahead and put something in the chat to educate me more. There probably are more than one bird pollinator in Michigan and I would love to hear about that, again, I'm not a bird expert, just having a little fun with it. But this is a ruby-throated hummingbird and birds do visit these, especially hummingbirds, these tubular flowers, they tend to be the red colored flowers, and they are important pollinators of those kinds of plants. And this is a cool plant called Cardinal flower and it's also a good food plant for some caterpillars on a tree, but we'll talk about that in a few weeks when I, or next week when I do native plants. Okay. So when we think about birds the focus more today is gonna be on food that these trees provide for the birds. And that could be berries and nuts, seeds, things like that, certainly many of our trees provide that. But these two birds in the picture anyway are going to be more interested in insects, so mostly caterpillars that those birds are gonna be needing to feed their young as they're nesting and breeding. The important part of their life cycle, and really important for their conservation, as we are becoming more and more worried about our bird populations since some declines worldwide, and providing some food for them in the form of insects can really be a good idea. So this was from a study, I'm not gonna talk too much about research today, but I do wanna show this one table because many of you have probably seen this before in one form or another. This is from a study by Doug Tallamy in the University of Delaware, and this is looking at mid-Atlantic region plants and their importance as supporting butterfly and moth species richness or diversity. So we're looking at basically the number of species of different butterflies and moth larvae that they use these plants as a host and it's organized by plant genus. So look at oaks being number one with over 500 species that use it as a food plant. And then they kind of ranked them. And this is research that's ongoing and really interesting. Dr. Tallamy has a couple of books out that are really good geared toward the home owner and how you can implement practices based on this research. But I kinda wanna take this and cross reference it with things that we know about pollinators specifically come up with a list of trees for Michigan that could be really good ones for birds, bees, and butterflies, right? So zoom in a little bit. The top 10 here of course oaks, cherries, and willows, I'm gonna talk about those. Plenty of these other plants are already pretty common in our forests and our landscapes, that's good news. Maples are here. And I'm gonna talk about number 17, basswood, that's a really important plant for pollinators and for birds. I do wanna mention oaks because they are number one and an interesting thing about oaks in Michigan is that with our climate change warming the northern parts of the lower peninsula, we're seeing that, that there's an opportunity to bring some of these species that are kind of at the northern edge of the range in Southern Michigan into Northern Michigan because the climate now is more amenable to them. So it's an opportunity to bring some plants that are really good food plants for caterpillars and of course then that serves the song birds. So here are a couple of nice oaks that again are mainly known in Southern Michigan but could certainly now be brought up and used in our landscapes in parts of the northern lower peninsula. Maybe towards the edges, not so much towards the center where it's quite a bit colder. But you're always gonna be the best judge of your site and if you know you have cold spots or exposure that's gonna make it a little tougher on these more southern species, then maybe, maybe don't use these. But they are really good plants for, they are really good plants for caterpillars, okay. Over 500 species in the mid-Atlantic that use it as a food plant. I'm not sure as far as pollinators, I'm pretty sure it's not as good for pollinators, or bees in particular. But still a really good plant for caterpillars, I think a good one to put in the landscape. Now cherries if you remember were number two on Dr. Tallamy's table. And I in particular am a big fan of these, I am spending a lot of time with wild cherries this spring and photographing pollinators and bees on them. So we have our black cherry and that's the one that's probably the most like a tree. These other two are a little bit more on the shrub side of things. But they're, they just put out so many flowers in the spring time, smell great, they look great, and in addition those flowers are gonna produce berries, cherries, little cherries, and those are really good food for wildlife as well. A, one word of caution about our cherries, they're great for bees and caterpillars, so yeah three thumbs up for that, they do, they're not good for horses. So not something you wanna put around, you actually might wanna eliminate it from your horse path if you have cherries growing there. Our willows, these are again really important early spring flowers, often the only thing blooming early in the year. You know, a lot of bees are depending completely on willows. Luckily willows do pretty well in marginal areas they're not a rare plant by any means. But it's important to mention them, and they are a plant you could incorporate in your landscape at some level. These are the three native willows, there are certainly many more, and the top one is the tree version, the other two are more on the shrub side of things, but worth mentioning. The other thing about willows is that they tend to have shallow roots that could be a little bit, they can tend to seek out our plumbing. And so another thing about black willow is that it's known for losing limbs, dropping limbs on things, so something to be used with caution in a landscape. Pussy willow is probably the one that's the most suited for use in our home landscapes, can even be pruned into a hedge. The other ones you might wanna consider using in a mullet garden, okay. So this why you have maybe you have part of your yard off out of the way where you don't have to worry about it clogging up your plumbing, or dropping limbs on things, you know party in the back yard even includes some willows. Okay. Red Maple, this is one that you might not even know it has flowers, but it is earliest, one of the earliest, certainly the earliest trees in the landscape putting out flowers. But they're so inconspicuous to our human eyes that you might not even know that they were there. These are the male flowers, that you can see anthers here, those would have the pollen on them, and they are a really important resource for bees in the early spring. And it's a nice tree in the landscape for lots of other reasons. Nice fall color. American basswood, this is a nice good size tree, up to 50 feet tall. The foliage is excellent for caterpillars and the flowers are great for bees. So definitely one that's worth mentioning, good landscape tree. The tulip tree, now this is not on Dr. Tallamy's list, probably didn't quite make the cut, but it's a really neat tree, it does serve as a host for caterpillars. Our eastern tiger swallowtail feeds on the foliage of this one, and several other moths, including some of our giant silk moths both use this as a food plant. It has these really neat flowers, very tulip like, it's in the magnolia family. And this is another one of those that folks in Southern Michigan are probably somewhat familiar with, been using it there in the landscape and it's naturally occurring in the forest for a long time. But it's just starting to make its way into landscapes in the northern parts of the Lower Peninsula where it's pretty safe now to grow it here thanks to our warming climate. Couple of other honorable mentions here, they're not in the table I showed you earlier, but they are great landscape plants that have flowers for pollinators, and fruit for wildlife, the serviceberry and juneberry. And then one that I really like in the landscape is the alternate leaved dogwood or prairie dogwood, and it's not quite tree, it's a small tree maybe. But it's got flowers and it is a host to many many different kinds of lepidoptera. And then the redbud, couldn't do this without mentioning redbuds and those gorgeous purple flowers in the spring. And another one that we can grow, probably not here in the Traverse City area, I think some people are already growing it here, but it is really pushing the zone, It's not, I mean it's not really hardy here. But now if you have a site, or maybe it, you know that it tends to not get as cold, not exposed to those cold winter winds you might be okay growing it here. I wanna point you towards some resources. This is our pollinator, Michigan Pollinator Initiative, Pollinators.msu.edu, and that is just loaded with resources for pollinator plantings. There's a publication on here about tress as well. And Arbor Day Foundation has lots of good suggestions. This table Heather Holme created and you can actually access this on the Michigan Pollinator Initiative site, is a really convenient table that shows where these different trees can grow well, and when they bloom, and which pollinators visit them. And then we have on the horticultural side of things, we have these smart tree tips sheets on the Gardening in Michigan website, and then gardening.msu.edu you go to the trees and shrubs section, okay, and then click on smart tree tip sheets and there's a series of those that will outline some of the characteristic horticultural characteristics, what kind of soils they like, how big do they get, how wide is their spread. Really important considerations if you are thinking about using them in the landscape you wanna put it in a place where it's gonna do well. And a shout out to our Gardening in Michigan Facebook page, please like us on Facebook. If you have a moment either now, or I will send a follow up email with this link as well. I would appreciate it if you can respond to our questionnaire. It's a brief survey, it's completely anonymous, and optional. I do ask that you fill it out, you can choose to not answer any of the questions, but at least click choose to not answer, it allows us to count our participants in these programs, which is really important for reporting to our funders. Thanks a lot for joining me today. It looks like I succeeded in keeping it brief, that was my goal. I'll be back again for native plants for bees next week. (Annette) Nate? (Nate) And then bee hotels, and don't forget about Captivating Caterpillars on June 19th. And plenty of time for questions. Let's see what's in the Q and A. (Annette) There's a couple in the Q and A. (Nate) Which of the trees are deer resistant? Great question. I'm afraid I don't, I'm not sure I know the answer. There might be some of those where I could answer where I can answer that question. I will mention that the serviceberries are great food for wildlife including deer and birds to the extent that if you ever wanted to try to eat some you really have to work hard to keep them from getting them before you do. Let's see. Deer resistant. Yeah, I'm sorry I don't really know an answer to that question. But I would look on the smart tree tip sheets, that will tell you if they're resistant to deer. The June 19th webinar, Captivating Caterpillars we'll have a registration. I don't have that link here today, but I will be providing it as soon as it's available to me, and I, 'till next week, and I'll put it in the recording of the webinar. So you all will get a link to the recording, if you attended today, also if you did not attend you'll get a link to the recording. So register on their website info. I'll do this one, yup. And so Annette did I miss anything in the chat that was worth? I'll leave that pollinator info up for a moment if anyone else has questions for me. We did have one up here about mosquitoes and if mosquito spray kills bumble bees. I might as well address that. Yeah, so most of the mosquito sprays are gonna effect bumble bees. I would definitely recommend that anyone using those sprays not put them on flowering plants. And another danger of course is that our bumble bees in the spring are rooting around in the litter layer looking for a place to nest so if any of those applications are, are getting on leaf litter, or on the ground, which unfortunately they often do, and that's another place for the bumble bees to contact that product. And often those are contact insecticides so they'll simply just need to come in contact with it to be harmed. Another harmful thing for a lot our beneficial insects are those exterior treatments on houses that people often do to keep ants and spiders off their houses, that can be really detrimental to our beneficial insects as well. Okay. I'm gonna wrap things up here. Thank you all so much for joining. See you next week! (upbeat music)

Trees for the Birds, Bees, and Butterflies

From Nathaniel Walton May 29th, 2020  

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