VAL BOURNE’S WILDLIFE
All nectar is pretty much the same...or is it?
IWAS at a jolly gathering a few weeks ago, enjoying a pub meal, and marvelled at the complexity of the drinks order. Gin was the favoured tipple of some young things. Others wanted wine, some wanted shandy and two lightweights, including me, went for fizzy water with lemon and ice.
It proved how different we all are and the insects that visit our gardens are equally picky when it comes to collecting nectar. Flowers come in different shapes, colours and sizes, that’s obvious, and they all produce nectar, which is the sugary drink most flying insects need for energy. Pollination is almost a by-product, rather like my cat spreading goosegrass seeds through the garden when she hunts for voles. Thankfully I haven’t got many of these cleavers.
Nectar, rather like our choice of tipple, differs enormously in strength because the sugar levels vary. Friedrich G. Barth writing in a book entitled Insects and Flowers points out two extremes. Fritillaria nectar has eight per cent sugar and marjoram (Origanum vulgare) contains 76% sugar. It’s noticeable in my garden that flies seem to be attracted to my fritillarias, particularly my crown imperials (Fritillaria imperialis). Flies also like green flowers and the flowers on my Veratrum album and a shrubby umbellifer called Bupleurum fruticosum are rarely without a visit from these excellent pollinators.
In August one pink-flowered plant, Origanum laevigatum ‘Herrenhausen’, is a magnet for small tortoiseshell butterflies presumably because the nectar’s sugar-packed. Nearer the house there’s a shorter similar oregano growing in the cracks in the paving, Origanum vulgare ‘Compactum’. This is the preferred plant of the small copper butterfly, which we normally get a lot because its main food plants are sorrels and these grow in the field behind the house. At times the field seems to turn rhubarb-pink due to the seed heads.
Nectar’s a variable three-way mixture of sucrose, glucose and fructose. Sucrose- rich nectar is found mostly in flowers pollinated by insects with long mouth parts including long-tongued bees, moths and butterflies. Often these flowers have long trumpets, like the penstemon. However insects are cunning. Many a short-tongued bee bites into the back of the flower to get their energy drink.
Flowers are equally cunning and the borage family contains plants that are able to top up their nectar supplies within minutes so bees are constantly visiting. Pulmonarias, comfrey and that starry blue flower that turns pink in Pimms (Borago officinalis) are all borages.
“Flowers are equally cunning”