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Pollinator Post 2/15/24 (1)

With another series of rain in the forecast, I want to make sure I get in some outdoor time while I can.  Besides, it’s time to check on what’s new at the Skyline Gardens.
Along the paved road, I notice that new plantings have gone into the robed-off seed beds on the sides.  

Hmm… what has the volunteers planted?  Tidy Tips, Layia platyglossa?  I look forward to seeing the cheery faces of their blossoms, so will the pollinators!
On a California Manroot, Marah fabacea, a female flower has opened up at the leaf axil below the cluster of male flowers still in tight buds.  As I look around, this development is the same in all the vines I find today.  It’s amazing that I have failed to see this for all these years.  I guess  you have to catch the first flowers on the vine to appreciate what’s happening.  Apparently, the monoecious plant has separated the bloom time of its male and female flowers to avoid self-pollination.  How clever!  The temporal separation of the sexes is termed dichogamy, but I have thought it only applies to the maturation of the reproductive structures of bisexual flowers!  Can the Manroot be considered a plant exhibiting protogynous (female-first ) tendency?
A old twig has fallen off an oak tree, its surface still laden with life – fungus, mosses and lichens.
By the Water Tank fence, the two large bushes of Rosemary, Salvia rosmarinus (family Lamiaceae) are in glorious bloom.  Although the plant is not native, the bees are intensely attracted to the flowers – a good source of both nectar and pollen.  The dance between flowers and bees is something to behold. 
Sage flowers (genus Salvia) feature a unique pollination mechanism called a “staminal lever”.  The flower is bisexual and protandrous, i.e. the male parts mature earlier than the female parts.  When a pollinator probes the back of a male-phase flower in search of nectar, a see-saw contraption tilts the pair of pollen-filled (male) anthers down to deposit their load on the back of the insect.  When the insect next visits a female-phase flower, the protruding mature stigma will be the first part of the flower to touch the pollinator and will receive the pollen from the previous flower.
A Honey Bee, Apis mellifera (family Apidae) is probing a Rosemary flower for nectar and getting dabbed with pollen on her back by the pair of arching stamens.  The bee is essentially collecting both nectar and pollen simultaneously.
Note the dusting of the cream-colored pollen on the bee’s thorax as she lifts off.  
Another Honey Bee is collecting pollen directly from the anthers arching forward from the corolla.  Note the cream-colored pollen in her pollen basket.  
The bee is using her mandibles …
… as well as her tongue to extract pollen from the anthers.  
This other Honey Bee is sitting squarely on the lower lip of a Rosemary flower and reaching up to collect pollen from the anthers.
Flower and bee seem made for each other – a perfect partnership!

Curious about the Pollinator Posts? 

Who created the Pollinator Posts?2025-12-09T10:27:17-08:00

The Pollinator Post is a photo journal created by May Chen, a local naturalist.  It started many years ago, as simple e-mails sharing the excitement of discovery with fellow hikers and gardeners.  The burgeoning readership eventually necessitated the creation of the Google Group, the Native Gardeners three years ago.  Now the journal has found a permanent home at our website, with easy access to all.  Let May guide you through the miniature world of the creepy crawlies, regaling you with the drama that is happening right under our noses.  Enjoy!

May likes to describe herself as a career volunteer.  She has been a docent at Martin Griffin Preserve in West Marin for more than 20 years.  Her passion for plants and insects has led her naturally to the study of pollination biology.  She has taught docent-training classes on pollination at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden.  As a volunteer with the Friends of Sausal Creek, May has helped in the native plant nursery and tended the BridgeView Pollinator Garden.  She enjoys exploring the East Bay parks and gardens, and shares her observations on the Pollinator Post.  

Because of her initial focus on pollinators, especially bees, May has titled her missives “Pollinator Post”.  However, over the years of observation, she realized that we should view the botanical world as an interconnected whole that embraces other plant-insect interactions that are often overlooked – e.g. predator/prey, decomposer/recyclers, host/parasites, each contributing to the health and stability of the collective.  Too often we are quick to judge insects as “good” or “bad”, ignoring their true roles in the ecosystem.  We need to understand these relationships if we were to be good stewards of our gardens, our farms and wild lands.

To see more of May’s work, see the following article and videos:

The Buzz in My Garden by May Chen, originally published in the Regional Parks Botanic Garden quarterly newsletter Manzanita in 2018

Life and Death on Milkweed

Life and Death on Silverleaf Lupine

How were the photos taken?2026-01-06T09:08:09-08:00

The photos in the older Pollinator Posts were taken with a series of Canon Power Shot point-and-shoot cameras with built-in macro capabilities.  Once May discovered the amazing convenience of the iPhone camera in 2019, she gave away all her other camera equipment.  Since then she has taken all her photos with her trusty iPhone 11Pro.  The close-ups are taken with a Sandmarc attachable 10X macro lens.  “Anybody with a cell phone can do it!”

 

There are countless other attachable macro lens available on Amazon, some as inexpensive as $30, that also work  well.  In fact, here’s one recommended by a bee enthusiast friend, Emil. The disadvantage of this lens, when compared to the Sandmarc, is that it clips on, and the clip could get in the way. 

In what area, locations, and when were the photos taken?2025-12-08T15:17:07-08:00

The photos in the Posts were taken in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area; they were taken at Crab Cove and Bay Farm Island in Alameda, Skyline Gardens and the Bridgeview Pollinator Garden in Oakland, Mendocino Park in Richmond, numerous sites in the East Bay Regional Park District, such as the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, and Inspiration Point, other open space areas in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. and occasionally at private gardens, among other locations..

The Pollinator Posts began on July 12, 2019. Post creation is paused at the end of each year, during the quiet time for insects, and resumes in the following spring.

How can the Posts help me garden for wildlife?2025-12-08T15:16:39-08:00

Browse the Posts to see what insects you might look for in your own garden on certain plants at a specific time of year. For example, you could search on “August”, and among the results you’ll see that you could be looking for leaf cutter bees on aster and, early in the morning, male longhorn bees sleeping on buckwheat or tarweed. If you have soap plant (aka soaproot) you might see the caterpillar of the western brown elfin butterfly, or dance flies.

Search on ‘pale swallowtail caterpillar” and you’ll see that it can be found on coffee berry, as can miner bees, hover flies, lady beetles, and more. Try it! Search on “clarkia,” “sunflower,” “gum plant,” or “acmon blue butterflies” and see what you discover!

How can I search the posts?2025-12-08T15:16:05-08:00

The search engine looks at every word in a post: you can search on an insect, such as caterpillar, a plant, like lupine, a month, or a location.

Can I use the photographs or text in these Posts?2025-12-08T15:15:11-08:00

The photographs and text in the Pollinator Posts are licensed as

CC BY-NC (Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial). Basically, this means that the content can be used by others as long as they properly attribute it to © May Chen, and use it for non-commercial purposes.

Thank you to…2025-12-09T10:28:01-08:00

May Chen, for allowing her work to be made available to the general public on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour’s website. 

David Faden, for solving the technical aspects of how to get the Posts, which were in an invite-only email Google Group, onto the Tour’s website. This was complicated, as you can see here.

Jeffrey Samorano, owner of Fearless Digital Journey, for integrating the posts into WordPress and making them functional and attractive.

Michael May, Clytia Curley, and Robin Mitchell for their help with earlier versions of this project. 

It was a pleasure working with all of them on this project. 

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