Stop 9: Wildflower Meadow

Butterflies and some bumblebees have short tongues, which they use to collect sugary nectar from shallow flat platform wildflowers like buttercups and dandelions.  Other bumblebees, like the garden bumblebees, have long tongues, and they need to find deep wildflowers like the three-leaved white or red clover which grows all over the grass lawns here at Stranmillis.

Whilst sipping nectar, the bee’s furry body captures pollen from the flower’s tall anthers. This pollen is brushed into pollen baskets on the bee’s legs, to take back to the nest. When it flies on to another flower, some pollen falls onto this flower’s central stigma to make new seeds grow.

Stranmillis University College, with advice from the RSPB NI, is beginning to turn this grass back to a meadow. Rich in wildflowers once more, this meadow will provide flower food for the different pollinators throughout their whole lifecycles. If you come to this college as a student, you could check out how well the flowers are growing.

Activity:

“Look closer” Make detailed drawings of different flowers. Click for more Wild Challenges.

Find a shallow open platform flower like a daisy or buttercup and a deeper flower like the three leaved white or red clover. Look for the sugar filled nectary underneath the petals and joined to the stem, the tall anthers covered in pollen and the central style like a straw which carries the pollen down to the bottom to the ovary where the seeds grow?  Bees love herbs like lavender, chives, sage, rosemary and thyme, which are easy to grow to provide nectar all through the summer months.