Water Colors in the Garden

By Ginger Baer, Gilpin County Master Gardener

This is the time of the year that we get flooded with our seed catalogs. Oh, to dream of warm, sunny, gardening weather.  Those catalogs do help brighten a grey wintery day. However, when you get through the catalog and make your order, what else can you do?

One of my first paintings

My grandmother and mother were terrific gardeners.  They also were really good at using their water colors to capture the plants that they loved so much. I have many of my mother’s paintings in my home.  I especially love the floral ones because they are reminders of our gardens and sunny, warm weather.

Two paintings by my mother, Caroline English Stancliff

I have gardened as long as I can remember, but only took up painting six years ago when I retired. To get started I took classes at a community art center.  I then bought some lesson books from my teacher to keep me going. I find this to be a great winter-time activity. I am one of those people that needs sunshine and color in the winter.  Painting really helps. I highly recommend it!

Two more of mine. See the sunshine?

So how do I manage to paint a picture of a flower or vegetable when the ground is all covered in white?  Let’s go back to those seed catalogs. Shepherd’s Seeds has great photos.  Botanical Interests has real artsy graphics. If you want to get inspired, pull out one of your catalogs and start thinking of what you love and what would be fun to paint. My mother used to get out the White Flower Farm catalog.  Some of the things that I found in her bag were clippings of flowers right out of a catalog. As a matter of fact, I inherited all of her art supplies.

Some of the supplies from my mother

Of course, there are other mediums you can use besides watercolors. I just happened to have water colors given to me.  Sometimes they are hard, but I love the softness of them. There are oils, acrylics, pastels, colored pencils, and much more.

I didn’t think I could draw, let alone paint. Those lesson books helped. So did practice, practice, practice. Don’t be shy, give it a try! And then have many happy years of painting things from your garden.

Another of mine. How Colorado is that!

Additional Resources:

 

This is my art instructor  http://www.janetnunnwatercolors.com/

 

Supplies can be purchased easily on-line.  I have used www.Michaels.com and http://www.janetnunnwatercolors.com/

 

Beginner watercolor techniques - https://watercolorpainting.com/

What is a Pollinator Syndrome?

By Lisa Mason, Arapahoe County Extension

In general, research has shown that plants have specific flower traits that attract pollinators, and the plants provide the pollinator with nectar and pollen rewards. These attractive traits can include flower color, odor, shape, and availability of pollen and nectar. Some plants even have nectar guides which are markings showing where the pollinator should go to collect the reward. Different traits will attract different pollinators. Why would a plant evolve with traits to attract pollinators? Because visiting pollinators will facilitate plant reproduction. This relationship benefits both the plants and the pollinators.

For example, bird pollination is called “ornithophily.”  In Colorado, hummingbirds are primary bird pollinators. We know that hummingbirds generally prefer to visit flowers that are red, orange, or white. The flowers tend to be funnel-shaped, hang loosely on the plant, and have plenty of nectar deep in the flowers. For other birds around the world such as sunbirds, honeycreepers, and honeyeaters, the plants tend to have strong perch support for the bird to land.

Flowers that attract birds typically don’t have an odor, because birds don’t need the scent to find the flowers. You might also notice that the flower petals tend to curve outward to make it easier for a hummingbird in flight to drink nectar.

A female broad-tailed hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus). Note the pollen on her head. Photo: Nancy Klasky

The USDA Forest Service compiled a chart of pollinator syndromes for the major groups of pollinators.

A wide variety of research is available demonstrating different pollinator syndromes. I want to share two research studies with you.

Darwin’s Prediction of the Long-Spurred Orchid

In the 1860’s, Darwin studied orchids including the long-spurred orchid, Angraecum sesquipedal. He predicted the flowers were pollinated by a long-tongued moth because the flowers have a long spur approximately 12-inches long! The nectar sources are located deep in those long spurs. When Darwin received a specimen of this orchid, his wrote, “… good heavens what insect can suck it” (Darwin, 1862b).

At the time, no pollinators had been observed pollinating these orchid flowers. Scientists predicated pollinator could possibly be the species, Xanthopan morganii, and subspecies, Xanthopan morganii praedicta, commonly called the Morgan’s sphinx moth because they have a proboscis length (tongue-like tube) that averages over 8 inches long. More than 130 years later after Darwin’s prediction, documentation of this moth pollinating the orchid was finally published beginning in 1993 (Arditti et al., 2012). To learn more, I recommend reading this journal article.

Pollinator Syndromes in Columbines

Another research example that we see in Colorado shows that columbines (Aquilegia spp.) have adapted and evolved to attract different pollinators depending on their spur length. This is considered a “pollinator shift” when the plant adapts to the traits of a pollinator (Whittall and Hodges, 2007). 

Besides the spur length, note the other traits the columbines show to attract their designated pollinator. Image credit: Whittall and Hodges, 2007

Your Garden and Pollinator Syndromes

With anything, there are always exceptions to the rules. If you are looking to plant flowers to attract pollinators, you can use pollinator syndromes as a general guideline, but we recommend doing additional research and reading about pollinator-friendly plants that grow well in your area. For instance, to support pollinators, avoid double flowers. Many double-flowered horticultural varieties typically do not have pollen and nectar available for flower visitors.

Here are some resources for pollinator-friendly plant lists:

·         Creating Pollinator Habitat: https://extension.colostate.edu/docs/pubs/insect/05616.pdf

·         Attracting Native Bees to Your Yard: https://extension.colostate.edu/docs/pubs/insect/05615.pdf

·         Attracting Butterflies to the Garden: https://extension.colostate.edu/docs/pubs/insect/05504.pdf

·         Low-Water Native Plants for Pollinators: https://conps.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Low-Water-Native-Plants-for-Pollinators-brochure-6-8-15.pdf

·         Low-Water Native Plants for Colorado Gardens: Mountains 7,500’ and Above: https://conps.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Low-Water-Native-Plants-for-CO-Gardens-Mountains.pdf

·         Low-Water Native Plants for Colorado Gardens: Front Range and Foothills: https://conps.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Low-Water-Native-Plants-for-CO-Gardens-Front-Range-Foothills.pdf

 

References

Arditti, J., Elliott, J., Kitching, I. J., Wasserthall, L. T. ‘Good Heavens what insect can suck it’ – Charles Darwin, Angraecum sesquipedale and Xanthopan morganii praedicta. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 169, Issue 3, 403-432 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8339.2012.01250.x

Darwin CR 1862b. Letter 3411-Darwin, C. R., to Hooker, J. D, 25 January 1862. Available at: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-3411

Whittall, J., Hodges, S. Pollinator shifts drive increasingly long nectar spurs in columbine flowers. Nature 447, 706–709 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05857