Dear Great Sunflower Project Friends,
Happy Pollinator Week! From today through June 28, the whole country is celebrating the small, winged workers that keep our gardens — and our food — alive. This year’s national theme is all about host plants and the caterpillars that become butterflies and moths, which is a lovely reminder of something we say a lot around here: bees are our heart, but they are far from the whole story.
🌙 Did you know? While the bees clock out for the evening, moths take over the night shift — pollinating flowers in the dark while the rest of us sleep. The plants have evolved to meet them halfway, so a “moth flower” is often easy to spot once you know the cues. They tend to be large and showy, or gathered into a broad landing pad; pale or white, to catch what little light remains after dusk; long and tubular or deeply spurred, shaped to fit a moth’s long, coiled tongue; and rich with nectar held deep at the base, where only a hovering visitor can reach it. Most telling of all, they save their strongest, sweetest perfume for the evening, exactly when the moths are flying. If you grow evening primrose, moonflower, nicotiana, or four o’clocks, you already have moth flowers in your garden — worth a dusk visit this week.
So here’s your Pollinator Week mission, and it takes just five minutes:
Find a flower in bloom near you. Watch it for five minutes. Write down who comes to visit. That’s it — and a count of zero is real data, too.
Every count you log joins one of the largest community-gathered records of pollinators in North America — more than 200,000 counts and growing, all from people like you watching flowers, five minutes at a time.
And it’s easier than ever to add yours. You can now record your count two ways:
- At GreatSunflower.org, the way you always have, or
- Through SciStarter, if that’s where you already track your community science.
Either one gets your observation into the same dataset. Pick whichever is easiest and count this week.
One flower, five minutes, a future for pollinators.
If you’d like to do a little more: keeping this project running — and the data free and open to everyone — depends on the community that believes in it. If you’re able, a gift of any size this Pollinator Week helps us keep the counting going.
Giving takes just a moment through our secure donation form. Because the form is hosted on San Francisco State University’s giving site, please type “The Great Sunflower Project” into the “Write in alternative designation” field so your gift comes straight to us. And don’t mind the suggested amounts you’ll see there — those are set by the University, not by us, and any amount you choose is truly welcome.
And if a five-minute count is all you can give right now, that’s a real gift too.
Thank you for watching, counting, and caring this week and every week.
Bee Well,
Gretchen
The Queen Bee
The Great Sunflower Project
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