The sedum is flowering - and with it comes the bees

I have a good many plants that attract pollinating insects into the garden but in early September none are as attractive to the local bee populations as Sedum spectabile.  For the last couple of sunny days I've taken some time to sit by my little clump and record the comings and goings of my neighbourhood bees, attracted by the abundant nectar in the myriad of individual pink flowers that make up the heads of this semi-succulent plant.  There were rather more than I would have thought.

Bear in mind that despite my training as an ecologist I'm not a bee expert so all identifications are tentative.  If I've got any wrong please let me know and I'll edit the post to suit.  As always, click to embiggen the photos.

Honeybees, Apis mellifera, came in their dozens.  Some were the normal lighter coloured form, others the darker bodied form.  There must be at least two hives locally though I've no idea where they are.

Apis mellifera, lighter coloured form

Apis mellifera, lighter coloured form

Apis mellifera, darker coloured form

I had quite a few visits from the common carder bee, Bombus pascuorum, one of the bumble bee family.  This is a ground nester, with up to 150 offspring from the overwintered queen over the course of the summer.  Given the brightness of the orange hairs hasn't faded, the two photos below are probably end of season, newly hatched queens stocking up for winter and the chance to produce their own nests next year.  There are enough undisturbed spots in my own and other local gardens to provide nesting sites.

Bombus pascuorum

Bombus pascuorum

Another member of the bumble bee family made a couple of appearences.  Given the lemony colour and the white tip to the abdomen I believe this one is Bombus lucorum though it could be the very similar Bombus terrestris.  As I said, I'm no expert, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Bombus lucorum

Bombus lucorum

I also spotted a red tailed bumble bee, Bombus lapidarius, but it was gone before I had the chance to photograph it.  No stock photos, I'm afraid, but I'll update if I take one.

Far smaller than the honeybees and bumble bees were a couple of little solitary bees. Lasioglossum species.  These are tiny little things, less than 1cm / 0.4in long - and a challenge to photograph. I use a diffused flash mounted on an articulated bracket so that the flash head sits just in front of my Tamron 90mm macro lens (+25mm extension tube in this case) to give soft, shadowless lighting.  Focusing is manual.  Essentially I set the macro lens to full extension and then slowly lean in to get the shot and fire when the subject comes in to focus.  Easier said than done as the hands and body shake and the insect moves around.  A lot of shots are failures, usually because I haven't nailed the focus exactly.  Thank goodness for digital SLRs - I'd never have been able to afford the film costs back in the days when I shot with Olympus OM cameras and Fujichrome slide film.

Anyway, back to the bees.  I've tentatively identified the one below as a male Lasioglossum calceatum, one of the commonest species in the UK.

Lasioglossum calceatum

Lasioglossum calceatum

Lasioglossum calceatum

I'm definitely not sure about this next one.  It could be a heavily striped male Lasioglossum calceatum or it could be the far scarcer Lasioglossum xanthopus.  Either way, it's a pretty little thing and I'm happy to see it feeding on the sedum.

Of course, where there is prey, there are predators.  The bees may be attracted to the flowers to feed but down below the flower heads, spinning their rather tatty webs were a number of Linyphia triangularis spiders.  Too small to tackle a honey or bumble bee they would certainly make a meal of the little solitary bees should they blunder into the webs.  Nature is often cruel.

Linyphia triangularis

It is sometimes said that ornamental gardens aren't places for wildlife.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Providing that pesticides are not used (or at least very sparingly) even a more exotic garden can attract a variety of wildlife.  It may be small - but it's there.

Hedychium densiflorum 'Stephen'

I have a liking for ginger lilies, Hedychium species and varieties, though the size of a well grown clump compared to the space I have available precludes me from growing more than a few.  In UK conditions many are perfectly hardy, either dying down naturally or being cut down by frost to tough, winter hardy rhizomes which are often late to emerge the following spring but make up for it with swift growth of tall stems clothed with long, strap like leaves.  What they are not so good at is reliable flowering in our cool summer conditions.  But there are some exceptions.

In my small collection the earliest to flower is always Hedychium densiflorum 'Stephen'.  Naturally deciduous, hardy - though it did suffer in the recent harsh winters but has bounced back strongly - tall - to 5ft / 150cm or more - and with broad, exotic leaves well spaced up the pseudostem, it fits in well with my tropical style of gardening.

Collected by Tony Schilling in Nepal, 'Stephen' (and the similar 'Sorung' from a later collection) are atypical of the species and its other varieties in that both the terminal flower head and the whole plant are far larger.  Compare these two photos:

Hedychium densiflorum 'Assam Orange'

Hedychium densiflorum 'Stephen'

The flower heads of H.densiflorum 'Assam Orange' are thinner and little more than half the height of the 10in / 25cm heads of 'Stephen'.  In a garden setting, although the colouring of H.densiflorum is attractive, it's a far less desirable plant (unless you are a collector rather than a selector).  With limited space, I made my choice and 'Stephen' has fulfilled the mandate for a tall, tropical looking perennial with exotic flowers.

Here it is in my own garden.  I don't have room for a massive clump so I periodically have to split the rhizomes to keep it in bounds.  Nonetheless, the effect is what I wanted - even if there is nothing visible until late May.

There is, of course, a fly in the ointment.  Individual flowers are ephemeral, lasting a couple of days at most.  They have a sweet scent, particularly in the evening, that readily attracts pollinators and so they soon pass over.  The head opens flowers progressively from the base to the tip but the whole thing is fleeting.  Five or six days from first opening to final decay is typical.  There is a small variation in the time that the heads develop but don't expect the entire flowering to last longer than a fortnight.  But it's worth it - and if the autumn is warm enough I often get one or two new flowering stems before winter interrupts and the plants cycle down for their dormant season.  I even get the odd scarlet seed - though not recently, so no photos I'm afraid.

A little black magic

Little being the operative word.

I've grown the fabulously exotic Colocasia 'Black Magic' for a number of years now and it's normally one of the highlights of the late summer / early autumn garden.  By late August I expect to see my overwintered corms reaching about 30in / 75cm tall, potted into a large container, with foot long (30cm) leaves that emerge green and deepen to pure black within a couple of days and dangle from surprisingly stiff black stems, the whole producing a very effective, tropical looking foliage display.  Here's two views of the containers last August (posed in front of my Chaemerops humilis).  August the 17th to be precise.

Colocasia 'Black Magic'

Colocasia 'Black Magic'

Not this year.  'Black Magic' is a notoriously difficult colocasia to overwinter in cooler climates unless you have a well heated greenhouse or conservatory and can keep it actively growing all winter.  Unlike colocasias derived from the edible forms of Colocasia esculenta it is not adapted to dry storage.  I don't have heated glass so it has to take its chances in the house.  I withhold water to let it dry out a little and then keep it cool to trigger semi dormancy in the fleshy corms.  They don't appreciate going completely dormant or being too wet during the cool winter rest.  Grown too warm in the drier atmosphere of a house and the leaves can also far too easily get red spider mite infestations.  Getting the balance right is difficult but I manage it most years.  Even so, as a precaution I detach some of the small offsets and grow them on in warmer conditions in a well lit propagator. 

Last winter was one of my failing years for the main corms.  Conditions were a little too wet for them and they rotted.  No matter, I had a number of small offsets which, in a normal summer, would easily grow to a good size by August.

In a normal year, that is.

This summer has been anything but normal.  We've had a few warm days but not enough to trigger the explosive growth that abundant light, warmth, water and feeding can induce.  This is as far as they've got this year.

Colocasia 'Black Magic'

Barely a foot / 30cm high, small leaves and still in a 5in / 12cm pot rather than the 12in / 30cm containers they'd normally have been in by this time.  Not exactly the sub tropical feature that I look forward to every year.  In fact they'll probably be small enough to go back in the same propagator they came out of back in late March.

As always click on any of the pictures to enlarge.  In the last shot - taken today - you can see some little streaks in the top of the photo.  Yes, it's raining again.