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Insects

CLASS READINGS HOMEWORK – Set‐up & Test Your Own iNaturalist Account (see Class 3 – Reptiles). BRING YOUR SMART DEVICE WITH iNaturalist loaded. STUDY: Trail Card How Many are There? (National Geographic, Williams, April 2013) Some Help with the ! (Heistand & Wirka, 2015) Fun & Fascinating Facts about Insects (Wirka, 2011) Chart: Insect Wing Beats per Second (Wirka, 2010) Insects in Winter – How & Where Some Insects Overwinter (Hands on Nature) Harvester at Bouverie Preserve Once Stung, Twice Shy (Bay Nature Magazine, Kaplan, 2008) Why do Swarm (Bay Nature Magazine, Ellis, 2008) A Preliminary List of of Bouverie Preserve (iNaturalist, Wirka, August 2015) Pollinator Derby (Wirka & Heistand) CalNat: The Naturalist Handbook Chapter 6: 153‐160 Key Concepts By the end of this class, we hope you will be Understand and explain the rudiments of insect able to: flight; its advantages and limitations,

Identify some of the major groups (orders) of Feel more confident about sparking curiosity insects by their anatomy, and interest in 3rd and 4th grade learners by leading insect hunts in the soil, on , in Share a few amazing facts about the number bark, under rocks, and and importance of Earth’s insect life, Use iNaturalist to make observations, identify Understand and explain what makes an insect species & access natural history information. an insect (insect anatomy),

Describe a few of the ways that different insects grow and develop,

Know a few things about the most common animal on earth (rhymes with “needle”),

Recommended Resources ACR & iNaturalist Websites On the Bouverie Docent pages of the website (log in to use) 1. Identification of insects by order 2. Pollinator Derby – a set of trail cards to use with kids in the spring to search for pollinators on particular types of flowers https://www.egret.org/user On the iNaturalist Website 1. Common insects of Bouverie Preserve, iNaturalist field guide https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/3941 2. A preliminary list of Butterflies of Bouverie Preserve on iNaturalist www.inaturalist.org/guides/2119 Trail Tip Other Websites Observing harvester nests is a highlight for many children Need help with an insect ID? Upload your picture at www..net visiting Bouverie, especially in and let the conversation begin. This site is a great online community of the fall. To give your learners a naturalists who enjoy learning about and sharing observations of chance to watch ants in action, insects, spiders, and other related creatures. try placing a row of 5-6 dry grass stems across the entrance to a Welcome to the wonderful world of insects. Fun facts & info to share busy harvester ant nest. http://www.earthlife.net/insects/ Watch what happens and use The California Academy of Sciences webpage has a long list of links to the 3 Levels of Questioning sites full of insect info of interest to bug lovers of all ages. while observing the worker ants https://www.calacademy.org/scientists/entomology come out and move the grass stems away from the nest Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation http://www.xerces.org/ entrance. This can be quite amusing as some groups of ants The Beetle Ring hosts a ponderous number of sites about beetles will seem to be working at cross http://www.naturalworlds.org/beetlering/index.htm purposes to each other. Art Shapiro’s Site has 34 years of butterfly data collected by If you watch long enough, you’ll U.C. Davis professor of Evolution and Ecology notice that each of the items blocking the nest will be moved http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/ about the same distance away For more about butterflies and moths of , visit from the entrance. www.butterfliesandmoths.org; Check out Kathy Biggs’ excellent online guide to California dragonflies and damselflies http://sonic.net/dragonfly

Recommended Reading Ants at Work by Deborah Gordon. (The Free Press, 1999). Great resource for delving into the lives of harvester ants. Bugs Rule! By Whitney Cranshow & Richard Redak (Princeton University Press, 2013). A basic introduction to the biology and diversity of insects and their importance to the environment and to humans; with great photographs, illustrations, little known facts, and sidebars. Butterflies through Binoculars, The West by Jeffrey Glassberg (Oxford University Press, 2001). California Insects by Jerry Powell & Charles Hogue. (University of

California Press, 1980). Another Trail Tip

Common Butterflies of California by Bob Stewart. (West Coast Lady Consider the Wee Beastie Safari as Press, 1997). a great lunchtime event! Place a 3- foot length of string or yarn in a line Common Dragonflies of California: A Beginner’s Pocket Guide by Kathy or circle on an interesting stretch of Biggs (Azalea Creek Publishing, 2009). ground. Then, focus your students’ attention on the area along the line Dragonflies & Damselflies of California by Tim Manolis (University of or within the circle. California Press, 2003). Take 5 or 10 minutes for careful Field Guide to Beetles of California by Arthur Evans and James Hogue observation of the soil, , and/or (University of California Press, 2006). insect life in this limited area. Give everyone a hand lens, and invite Field Guide to Insects of North America by Kenn Kaufman and Eric Eaton them to imagine what it would like if (Hillstar Editions, L.C., 2007). you were the size of an ant actually hiking along this line or within the Field Guide to the Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay Area and circle. Sacramento Valley Region by Arthur Shapiro and Tim Manolis (University of California Press, 2007). Learners can work in pairs or individually, taking turns looking and For the Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner. (Belnap Press , 2003). telling what they see, until no one can find anything that hasn’t already Forgotten Pollinators by Stephen L. Buchmann, Gary Paul Nabhan & been mentioned. Paul Mirocha (Island Press, 1997). Golden Guide: Insects by Herbert Zimm & Clarence Cottam (Western Publishing Company, 1987). Insects and Flowers: The Biology of a Partnership by Friedrich Barth (Princeton University Press, 1985) A fascinating discussion of the relationship of insects and flowers from a pollination ecologist’s perspective. Great photos of insect and anatomy. Moths of Western North America by Jerry Powell and Paul Opler (Regents of the University of California, 2009). Natural History of Pollination by Michael Proctor, Peter Yeo, & Andrew Lack (Timber Press, 2003). A fairly technical book with great information.

How many animal species are there? From National Geographic Magazine (April 2013). Accessed online June 20 2013 ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/125-explore/seeking-new-species

In the 1730s Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus set out rules for classifying species, the most basic biological category: a group of living things that look alike and normally mate only with each other. Since then, scientists have cataloged more than 1.7 million. But there’s still a lot of work to be done. Estimates of the total number of species range from 3 million to 100 million; one new study puts the figure at 8.7 million, give or take a million. The numbers at right, compiled from many surveys and statistical projections, offer the best guess for species in selected categories. - A. R. Williams Some help with the insects! There are so many insects on the planet that identifying them to species is very difficult for most of us. Even identifying them to their biological is sometimes impossible for all but the most skilled entomologist. However, it is relatively easy to identify them to their “order” (the category above “family” but below “class”) by learning a few basic features and understanding what the scientific name for each order means. This guide is designed to help you do that in one page! Fun and Fascinating Facts about I nsects

Insects are the most diverse group of organisms on the planet. That means that there are more species of insects than any other group. There are approximately 1,000,000 (one million) known species of living insects in the world.

How does this compare to other organisms?

Animals (vertebrates and invertebrates) account for nearly 1.4 million species. Thus insects represent over 70 percent of all animal species on the planet! If you include all of the other known non-animal species (plants, fungi, protists, algae— everything except bacteria!), there are about 1.7 million known species of organisms. Thus, insects account for roughly 60 percent of all living species (again, excluding bacteria). The number of mammals is minute compared to insects. There are just over 5000 species of mammals known in the world. Here’s a reality check for you: there are as many species of cockroach (an insect) as there are species of mammals on the planet! Beetles alone account for about 350,000 species, or just over 1/3 of all of the insect species. Beetles are therefore the largest group of on earth. Some perspective on pests: there are an estimated 2000 to 2500 species of pest insects (those that cause problems for agriculture or human health) worldwide. This means that pest species account for only 0.0001% of all insect species

But this is just the tip of the Insecta Iceberg. There are many more species of insects out there that we know nothing about. Some entomologists estimate the number of undiscovered insects to be 2 million species (about twice the number we know now), but others think it could be as many as 30 million.

How much biomass do insects account for?

According to the Smithsonian Encyclopedia, insects are thought to have the largest biomass of all terrestrial animals. It is estimated that there are some 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive at any given time. That’s 19 zeros!

Estimates of biomass of insects are difficult, especially since there are so many species and the number of species and individuals vary widely by ecosystem (desert vs. rain forest, for example). However, renowned entomologist E.O. Wilson has estimated that ants and termites alone account for up to one third of all the terrestrial animal biomass. Thus, ants and termites not only “outweigh” humans on the planet, they outweigh ALL terrestrial vertebrate species.

Sources: The World Conservation Union. 2010. IUC. Summary Statistics for Globally Threatened Species; John Hafenik, San Francisco State University, personal communication, June 2011, and Smithsonian Institution on-line encyclopedia at www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/buginfo.

Prepared for ACR Education by Jeanne Wirka, August 2011 Wing beats per second for some genera among major orders of flying insects

Wing beats Order Genera per second

Dragonflies and damselflies Skimmers (Libellula) 20 () Darners (Aeshna) 22,28

Beetles and weevils Ladybird beetles (Coccinella) 75-91 (Coleoptera) Scarabs (Melolontha) 46

Whites (Pieris) 9, 12 Butterflies and moths Emperor moths (Saturnia) 8 () Hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossa) 72, 85 Swallowtails (Pipilio) 5-9

Mosquito (Aedes, male) 587 Flies, mosquitos, gnats, and Mosquito(Culex) 278-307 their allies Housefly (Musca) 190, 180-197 (Diptera) Horsefly(Tabanus) 96 No-see-um (Forcipomyia) 988-1047

Bees, wasps, ants, and their Honeybees (Apis) 190, 250 allies Bumblebees (Bombus) 130, 240

() Wasps (Vespa) 110

Prepared for ACR Education by Jeanne Wirka, August 2010

Harvester Ants at Bouverie Preserve!

There are approximately 60 species of ant in Sonoma County, but anyone who’s been to Bouverie Preserve knows that it’s the harvester ants that steal the show. These complex creatures build many-chambered nests that may extend 10 to 15 feet below the surface of the soil. Because they are so ubiquitous on the trail, harvester ants are one of those animals you can count on to attract kids attention. Here are a few facts about our harvester ants:

Every worker ant is female and every A harvester ant carries a back to the colony worker has a job. Some ants work in the Photo by Gwen Heistand nursery, some in food storage, some in defense, some care for the queen. As an individual ant ages, her job may become more dangerous. From a resource perspective, it makes more sense for older, more expendable ants to go out on the risky forays for food, for example.

Ever wonder why harvester ants bother to carry the underground without taking off the chaff and awns and other fluff first? It’s because the seeds are preserved better with all the other stuff on them. Workers carry seeds to the nest, other workers clean seeds when ready to use, then all the chaff is taken outside the nest.

Adult harvester ants cannot digest their own food. The larvae can. So, adults feed seeds to the larvae, who regurgitate pre-digested food for the adults to slurp up. In this way, the larvae in the nursery chamber form a kind of “stomach” for the entire colony.

When a new “virgin” queen is produced, she takes flight with other new winged reproductives (called “alates”) to mate. She may mate with more than one male during her reproductive flight, but then she’s done! She will store sperm in a special pouch for the rest of her life. If eggs are fertilized with sperm, they become females. If they are not fertilized, they will become males. Most of the ants in any given colony are female.

A new queen has no workers to help her start a new colony so she must do all the work herself. She must dig a hole, lay eggs, hatch out a brood of workers and care for them until they are able to start caring for her. But, the queen can’t forage for food herself, so where does she get the energy to raise the kids? Her only expendable resource are the wing muscles she needed for her reproductive flight. With no flying in her future, her body reabsorbs the wing muscles to provide enough energy until her brood of workers can start feeding her.

Plaster cast of a harvester ant colony in Florida. Although the species is different, the architecture is similar for harvester ants here. From: Tschinkel WR. 2004. The nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant, badius. 20pp. Journal of Insect Science, 4:21, Available online: insectscience.org/4.21

Bay Nature magazine Twice Shy Once Stung, Jul-Sep 2008 Issue by Alan Kaplan on July 01, 2008

Yellowjacket.

Photo by Edward S. Ross.

You always remember your first sting. Mine was at summer camp, near the bathhouse. A careless step put a bumblebee between my bare foot and the flower she was visiting. Usually slow to anger, this worker bee reacted poorly to the pressure of my foot on her exoskeleton. Yikes!

Bees, ants, and wasps have stingers that have evolved from the females’ egg-laying organ (ovipositor), so only females can sting. (The line from “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee”—”Ouch! He stung me!”—is wrong: “He” doesn’t sting.) Most stings happen when people or pets get near the insects’ colony. The insects respond by stinging intruders in defense of their young or stored food.

Velvet ant. Photo by Edward S. Ross. Bee and wasp venoms have been fine-tuned over millions of years (and hundreds of millions of stings) to affect vertebrates in particular ways: Most venoms are painful but not toxic, unless you’re allergic. Entomologists say, “You aren’t dying, but you’ll feel like you are” when talking about the strongest stinging insects we have around here, the velvet ant (actually a wingless wasp) and the tarantula hawk, a wasp whose sting is strong enough to paralyze tarantulas, which it hunts as food for its offspring. For vertebrates like you and me, long-lasting pain teaches a lesson hard to forget; the next time you encounter a red-and-black, yellow-and-black, or orange-and- black insect, you’ll back away. Once stung, twice shy.

Justin Schmidt, a bee researcher for the USDA, has been stung by many kinds of insects in the course of his work. He has also interviewed other entomologists about their stinging experiences. He created a scale (which others have dubbed the Schmidt Pain Index) that assigns values of 0 to 4 to the pain produced by a stinging insect. Zero means the insect cannot penetrate skin (so no pain), and 4 means you can’t do anything else but scream (Schmidt writes, “causing immediate, excruciating, totally debilitating pain that completely eliminates the ability of the stung individual to continue to act in a normal fashion”). The stings of the common honeybee and the yellow jacket wasp are both 2, the velvet ant a 3, and the tarantula hawk a 4.

Tarantula hawk. Photo by Joe DiDonato.

You can avoid being stung this summer in several ways. Be sure to keep a lid on your soft drinks, and check that no wasp has gone in before you sip. Some sodas are particularly attractive to yellow jackets. Don’t wear yellow or shiny purple clothes; these are particularly attractive to yellow jackets. If the wasps do arrive at your picnic, don’t swat at them—that just increases your chance of being stung.

Yellow jackets and bumblebees have smooth stingers that don’t get stuck in you, so they can sting repeatedly. Honeybees have barbed stingers that tear out when they sting, so the bee dies in defense of its “comb, sweet comb.” If you’re stung by a honeybee, remove the stinger as quickly as possible: The attached venom sac and muscles can continue to pump venom after the bee has died.

Get out Now that you know about our local stinging insects, get outside and see them for yourself. As long as you treat them with a little respect, you’re not likely to get stung.

Start at the San Francisco Zoo’s Insect Zoo and check out the bee exhibit. This working beehive, visible as a cross-section behind transparent plastic, started with a scrap of honeycomb, a transplanted queen, and a few workers. The colony and its hive have since grown to fill the exhibit. See if you can spot the queen (tagged for easy identification), and track the workers as they leave the hive to forage in the nearby bushes. While you’re at the zoo, take a look at the displays of stinging and nonstinging bugs—ants, scorpions, cockroaches, and millipedes—from all over the world.

Or bring the bees to you by making your yard more attractive to them. You don’t have to remodel the entire yard: even a few patches of the right plants can make a haven for bees, important pollinators for many native plants and food crops. To attract native bees, which generally don’t sting, stick with plants adapted to our climate. Make sure you a variety: Small clusters of several types of flowers will attract more bees than a large patch of one , and an assortment of flowers that bloom at different times will give the bees food year- round. Many solitary native bees nest in shrubs or in the ground, so don’t use fertilizers and pesticides, and don’t mow frequently, since that can damage their nests. Start with California poppies, gumplant, clarkia, or coyote mint, and then see what works best in your garden. Bay Nature magazineWhy Do Apr-Jun 2008 Issue Dragonflies Swarm? by Michael Ellis on April 01, 2008

Q: Last October, while hiking on Mount Tamalpais, near Laurel Dell, I saw numerous swarms of dragonflies. Could you tell me more about this phenomenon? Is it seasonal? Or triggered by weather or courtship? [Khiem, San Jose]

A: Those dragonflies were most likely congregating to hunt, catch, and eat abundant insects that were also swarming. This is indirectly weather-related, because dragonflies are active only on warm days. Most need an air temperature of at least 63 degrees to get moving.

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Dragonflies and damselflies belong to an ancient insect group called the odonata, some of the earliest flying creatures on our planet. Dragonflies are big, strong fliers. They have very large eyes and hold their wings out straight when resting. Their cousins, damselflies, are smaller and have a weak, fluttery flight. Damselflies have small eyes and rest with their wings held up directly over their thorax.

While driving through the Central Valley near Williams last August, I encountered thousands, maybe millions, of common green darners, our state’s second-largest . As far as I could scan through binoculars in every direction for miles and miles, the air was filled with them. These iridescent giants were in constant flight, hunting insects breeding in the standing water and irrigation ditches so prevalent in this fertile agricultural land. On Mount Tamalpais I have seen swarms of common greens but also of the variegated meadowhawk. I suspect the latter may be what you saw. This widespread dragonfly, which grows to about two inches long and varies in color from pink to tan to dull gray, can be active year-round in the Bay Area, even in winter.

The swarming you saw probably had nothing to do with . There are over 60 kinds of dragonflies in California and more than 28 in the Bay Area, so mating strategies vary quite a bit among species. In some species, males wait and pounce on females as they fly by, and there is little color difference between males and females. The males of other species, like the western pondhawk, establish territories over a patch of prime real estate (rich with insect prey—freshwater ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, even poorly maintained hot tubs) and chase off rival males and attempt to copulate with every female that comes into their range. These species sometimes show a marked difference between females and males; the males are brilliantly colored with more vibrant facial patterns, which make it easier for them to tell potential mates from rivals.

Two great references are Kathy Biggs’s self-published pocket-size guide Dragonflies of California (Bigg’s Wildlife Pond) and Tim Manolis’s UC Press field guide Dragonflies and Damselflies of California (UC Press).

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See more articles in: Ask the Naturalist, Wildlife: Invertebrates, Reptiles, Amphibians

Most recent in Ask the Naturalist A preliminary list of Butterflies of Bouverie Preserve (August 2015)

Variable Checkerspot Pale Swallowtail Western Tiger Swallowtail Anise Swallowtail chalcedona 1 eurymedon 2 3 4

California Pipevine California Sister Lorquin's Admiral Mylitta Crescent Swallowtail californica 6 lorquini 7 mylitta 8 philenor hirsuta 5

Field Crescent Variable Checkerspot West Coast Lady Red Admiral Phyciodes pulchella 9 Euphydryas chalcedona 1 annabella 10 Vanessa atalanta 11

Painted Lady Mourning Cloak California Tortoiseshell Zephyr Anglewing 12 antiopa 13 Nymphalis californica 14 Polygonia gracilis zephyrus 15

Common Buckeye Common Ringlet Common Wood Nymph Gulf Fritillary Junonia coenia 16 doleta 17 Cercyonis pegala 10 Agraulis vanillae 18 Monarch Tailed Copper Purplish Copper Danaus plexippus 19 Atlides halesus 20 arota 21 Lycaena helloides 22

Spring Azure Acmon Blue Square-spotted Blue California Dogface Butterfly Celastrina ladon 23 Plebejus acmon 22 battoides eurydice 10 oregonensis 24

Sara Orangetip Cabbage White Orange Sulphur Umber sara 25 Pieris rapae 26 eurytheme 27 melane 28

Rural Skipper Sandhill Skipper Silver-spotted Skipper Mournful agricola 10 sabuleti 29 Epargyreus clarus 30 Erynnis tristis 31

Photos: 1. (c) Patrick Dockens, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), 2. (c) Franco Folini, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), 3. (c) brian lee clements, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 4. (c) Peter Prehn, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), 5. (c) 1999 California Academy of Sciences, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), 6. (c) randomtruth, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), 7. (c) Ken-ichi Ueda, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), 8. (c) Leslie Flint, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 9. (c) Bill Bouton, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), 10. (c) David Hofmann, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), 11. (c) rpayne72, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 12. (c) loarie, some rights reserved (CC BY), 13. (c) Aleta Rodriguez, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), 14. (c) Lauren Sobkoviak, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), 15. (c) kaitlin, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), uploaded by Kaitlin Backlund, 16. (c) Bill Bumgarner, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), 17. (c) 116916927065934112165, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), 18. (c) Brian Gratwicke, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 19. (c) TexasEagle, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 20. (c) Bill Bouton, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 21. (c) Liam O'Brien, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 22. (c) Jerry Oldenettel, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), 23. (c) pondhawk, some rights reserved (CC BY), 24. (c) Robb Hannawacker, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 25. (c) Robb Hannawacker, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), 26. (c) Eran Finkle, some rights reserved (CC BY), 27. (c) Dan Mullen, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), 28. (c) Robert, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 29. (c) Kerry Matz, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), 30. (c) MolanicPix, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), 31. (c) Larry Meade, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA)

Compiled by Jeanne Wirka, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA)

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Pollinator Derby!

The purpose of this game is to acquaint kids with different types of pollinators and the ways that flowers attract them. It taps into kids’ excitement about seeing “their” insect or flower and keeping score. The game is based on the concept of “pollinator syndromes;” that is, certain classes of pollinators tend to prefer certain types of flowers (based on color, shape, type of or other reward).

The way it works is to give each hiker a pollinator card (you can just print these pages out, cut each row of the table into strips and fold along the middle line to get six folded “cards”—no glue necessary). During the hike, the student gets to make a tally mark on his or her card whenever a flower that is likely to be pollinated by that animal is encountered OR you actually see the pollinator itself.

But, Beware! These are just general syndromes. In the field, you may see a pollinator visiting a kind of flower not listed, or the flower doesn’t smell like it is “supposed to.” The goal is to have fun and encourage discussion and observation, not to be “right.”

This game was designed by Jeanne Wirka for ACR Education. Many thanks to the Bouverie Preserve Docents who field tested it on February 28, 2007 and gave me many good suggestions. (modified by Gwen Heistand 2008, 2010, 2014 to include MGP plant examples)

Bird Flower shape: Deep wide tube

Color: Bright Red

Scent: No scent (most ’s can’t smell!)

What does the pollinator get? Nectar

Example: hummingbird fuchsia (Zauschneria californica); columbine (Aquilegia formosa); flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum); scarlet monkey flower (Mimulus cardinalis); paintbrush ( subinclusa ssp. Fransciscana)

Flower shape: shallow; lip flowers; many small flowers in mass; irregular flower Bee shapes; nectar guides; landing platform

Color: Yellow, Blue or Purple (or UV)

Scent: Fresh, sweet

What does the pollinator get? Nectar and/or .

Example: Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana), blue-eyed grass ( bellum); (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus); woodland tarweed (Madia madioides); California poppy (Eschscholzia californica); Soap Plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum)

Moth Flower shape: Deep, narrow tube

Color: White or pale green

Scent: Strong, sweet

What does the pollinator get? Nectar

Example: Evening primrose (Oenothera spp.)

Flower shape: Deep, narrow tube; many Butterfly flowers massed together; stamens and stigmas protrude forward;

Color: Red, yellow, pink or purple

Scent: Fresh, sweet

What does the pollinator get? Nectar

Example: wild lilac (Ceanothus spp.); hound’s tongue (Cynoglossum grande); Milkmaids ( californica); Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Flower shape: Flat or funneled/“trap-like”

Fly Color: Purple or brown

Scent: stinky

What does the pollinator get? Nothing! The fly is tricked into pollinating because the flower stinks like rotting stuff that flies like.

Example: Dutchman’s pipevine ( californica); wild ginger; fetid adder’s tongue

Flower shape: varies widely; Flat to bowl Beetle shaped

Color: Purple or brown or just dull or white, , or yellow-orange

Scent: Strong, fruity

What does the pollinator get? Edible flower parts. (a few drink nectar)

Examples: Morning glory (Convolvulus spp.); buckwheat ( spp.)