The Buzz
Dear Bee Hunters,
This is the 3rd weekend of the month so, it would be a good time to collect data. If you can't do it this weekend try to get a sunny day in before the end of the month. Personally, I'm finding it hard to find a fog-free day here in San Francisco!
Someone asked me what a bee was doing that carefully cut a piece of a rose and then flew away with it. There are a group of bees that nest in holes in wood (called cavities). These are often members of the genera Osmia and Megachile. These bees use pieces of leaves and flowers to line their nests and to cap the end of the cavity.
Osmia are probably the most gorgeous of all the bees. They come in blue and green and many are as shiny as a scarab beetle. Take a look at the Bee Guide and you'll see some wonderful pictures of the different genera of bees.
I also had an interesting discussion with a seed supplier about native sunflowers. He said that they find that the native sunflowers might have 95% viability (which measures whether the seed can germinate), but many of their seeds have high dormancy. Many plants that live in habitats that don't always have good conditions produce dormant seeds. You can think of this as an insurance policy. A plan that can skip a bad year, may produce more offspring than a plant that cannot. If this is one of the things going on with our seeds, you may find yourself a proud owner of a sunflower next spring.
Once again, I'd like to thank you for participating and especially thank those of you who have gone to the website and donated to the project. We couldn't do it without you.
Isn't summer grand!
Gretchen
http://www.greatsunflower.org
Comments
Still no sunflowers in Spokane
Here in Spokane, the sunflowers we received from the project are now between 2.5 and 4 feet tall. It'll be quite a while before they produce flowers. We have some other sunflowers that we planted much earlier. Could we use those instead? They are about 8 feet tall and should be producing flowers soon.
Finally got my seeds but
our spring, especially June, was not warm, not really cold, but everything in the garden is weeks behind a normal growing season,so
my sunflower seeds came up, a reasonable number.
I calculate they'll start flowering about Thanksgiving, so I'll be counting
those ice bees. Rare but somebody's gotta pollinate the snow clouds.
D. Daily, Northgate, Seattle
breaking dormancy
I did suspect dormancy might be a problem with germination of the seeds provided by the study. I got one late appearing sprout of the many I planted. The seeds may remain viable underground, and sprout much later (as late as next Spring). Wildflowers are great at achieving dormancy (lettuce seeds too), I've had native lupine seeds (Lupinus succulentus) last in the soil for ten years, waiting for conditions to be just right.
One trick to break dormancy on seeds is to chill them for a couple weeks in the refrigerator. This simulates Winter's chill, when planted they will act as if it is Spring and spout. Some plant the seeds and put the whole flat in the refrigerator, but I just chill the packets.
no luck with plants
I think some critter ate my plants as soon as they sprouted the first pair of leaves. The shoots were nibbled right off. Basically we have rabbits and squirrels around the yard -- sometimes a gopher tortoise or two. I will need to get some more seeds (I can get them on my own from one of the suppliers.) This time I will put a fence around them. It will probably be too late for the study, but I will do what I can.
- Philip