On this rainy late October day, I gaze wistfully across my brown and misshapen beds of asters and goldenrods. From late August until a few weeks ago, these backyard beds provided a floral bonanza of color. Stalks of dazzling, bold purple flowers with yellow centers of New England aster (Smphyotrichum novae angliae) leaned into long arching wands of the small-gold-colored flowers of wrinkle leaf goldenrod (Solidago rugosa).

The beauty of these two colors side-by-side are also very attractive to pollinators. Their eyes and brains are as hard wired to enjoy the beauty of these complementary colors as are humans. Of course, for pollinators, this color combination provides more than a little Zen, it is the promise of bountiful food.

For six weeks, my asters and goldenrods were humming with hundreds of honeybees, bumble bees, sweat bees and various wasps, and a host of butterflies including monarch butterflies Each individual pollinator seemed to move in a dance around the others, collecting nectar and pollen before winter.

One of the most exotic-looking insects I photographed in early October is the Great Golden Digger Wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus) . Who wouldn’t love a name like that? But how did such a gangly ground nesting wasp receive such a lovely name?

Most people would find this wasp frightening. Their abdomen is half black and half rusty-colored, with bright rusty-red long legs. The black head has large bulging eyes and golden hairs, and this wasp and can be over an inch long! All of this can look pretty intimidating, but they are basically harmless to people. The adults eat nectar; but they also seek out grasshoppers and crickets to provide food for their larvae. One tiny insect does so much work in our ecosystem!

It was not until I read Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamay that I realized the full scope of the significance of all the native asters and goldenrods, as well as many other native plants in the eastern deciduous forests and meadows. Douglas Tallamay is a research entomologist with the University of Delaware. For over 30 years he has worked to learn about and protect the biodiversity of our native insects and plants.

Douglas Tallamya and his students embarked on a very ambitious research project to identify those native plants which support the greatest diversity of native insect pollinators.  More specifically, they sought those plants which serve as the larval (caterpillars) hosts of moths and butterflies and those plants which also support native bees.  

One critical outcome of his work is the identification of 30 keystone native plant genera for butterfly and moth caterpillars.  The genus Solidago and Symphyotrichum are in the top 30 list of keystone plants supporting native caterpillars.   

Our native plants and native insects have co-evolved together and have interdependent relationships.  Nonnative plants for the most part do not support our native insects.  Without native plant communities, there would be fewer insects; without the insects, there would be fewer birds and small mammals, and so on up the food chain.  The entire ecosystem of our world would collapse without a healthy foundation of native plants and pollinators.

Tallamay has collaborated with the National Wildlife Federation and other organizations to help get this knowledge out to every citizen.  To become familiar with the list of pollinator friendly native plants in our area go to the (nwf.org/garden) web site.  You can type in your zip code to see the list for our region.  

We can all help by giving up a little lawn for native pollinator friendly plants.  I recommend you read Nature’s Best Hope to learn more about why we need native plants in our own yards.  You will be inspired and gain a deep understanding of how critical our native biodiversity is to our own survival.  And you will learn why we need to incorporate native plants to our urban and suburban settings.  

The Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge and many other protected lands are doing a lot to help sustain our native ecosystems.  There are pollinator meadows on the refuge.  But they need our help as well to provide corridors between the widely dispersed protected lands across our landscape.