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Pollinators
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August 28, 2025
Veterans Find Healing in the Beehives at Cleveland Botanical Garden
Our fascination with bees is as old as time itself. The Paleolithic cave art in Spain shows honey hunters perched on cliff faces 10,000 years ago. In ancient Egypt, the...
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July 17, 2024
Save the Hymenopterans (Bees, Wasps and more!)
Hymenopterans are the group of insects including bees, wasps, ants, and sawflies. “Sawfly” is the name applied to all but one group within the hymenopterans, making this group paraphyletic –...
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June 15, 2023
June is Pollinator Month: Here’s why we need pollinators!
Why do we care about pollinators? Pollinators are important creatures in natural ecosystems and our daily life because they provide vital services to wild plants and our crops. Pollinators carry and...
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January 4, 2023
Season Extending Plants for Pollinators
Some of the best pollinator gardens include just a few key features that make them work well. Food, water, shelter and host plants. One way to have the most food...
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August 24, 2022
Milkweed: Beneficial and Beautiful
Milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) are beneficial host plants for the Monarch butterflies. The plant provides the adult female Monarch with a place to lay her eggs. Once those eggs hatch the...
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August 24, 2022
Lip Sumac-ing Good: Wonderful, and Edible Sumac
Peeking up above the Echinacea, Phlox, and turtlehead in the Holden Arboretum’s, Arlene and Arthur S. Holden Jr. Butterfly Garden are the bright red, cone-shape infructescence of the staghorn sumac....
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May 17, 2022
Blue false indigo & Clouded Sulphur
Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is a flowering plant in the pea family (Fabaceae). This plant grows upright and makes an excellent border plant for your pollinator garden. It’s deep blue...
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May 17, 2022
Prairie ironweed & American Lady
Prairie ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata) is a staple meadow plant, growing tall and blooming in late summer and fall. It is self-seeding as seeds fall to the ground at the end of...
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May 17, 2022
Dog violet & Orange Fritillary
Dog violet (Viola labradorica) is a low-growing perennial that blooms with vibrant purple flowers in the spring. If it weren’t for these showy flowers, many would likely walk right by this...
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May 17, 2022
Yellow false indigo & Wild Duskywing
Yellow false indigo (Baptisia sphaerocarpa) is a beautiful addition to any flower garden. During the summer, yellow, upright flowers bloom and attract a variety of insects – the “good kind” of...
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May 17, 2022
Sweetbay Magnolia & Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
Sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) is an elegant, small magnolia. It’s creamy white flowers bloom in late spring here in Northern Ohio and put on a show that delights your senses of...
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May 17, 2022
Shumard oak & Banded Hairstreak
Shumard oak (Quercus shumardii) is a large tree that grows well in both urban and natural settings. Like most oaks, Shumard oak has deeply lobed, characteristic “oak” leaves and produces acorns...
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May 17, 2022
New England aster & Pearl Crescent
New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) is a large, summer-blooming perennial. It’s characteristic aster flowerheads sport vibrant purple petals, with bright yellow flower centers. You’ll often see bees and butterflies of all...
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October 3, 2021
The Avon-on-the-Lake Garden Club is saving Monarch Butterflies
Members of the Avon-on-the-Lake Garden Club are doing their part to save as many Monarch butterflies as possible. The group recently began a conservation project, initiated by President Elaine George,...
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August 26, 2021
Pollinators in the Plots
With a freshly printed degree, a head full of ideas and the desire to put both to use I was thrilled when offered the position of Pollinator Intern at the...
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August 16, 2021
Researchers, Horticulturists, and Volunteers Team Up to Leverage Long-Term Pollinator Data
Pollinators are the friends of plants and people. Most flowering plants (~80%) are animal pollinated. Sadly, there is a global trend in pollinator declines, especially under the changing climates. To...
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April 21, 2021
Trees are for Bees
With this unseasonably beautiful weather we have been experiencing here in Northeast Ohio it is hard to ignore the loud knocks of spring. Daffodils seem to have popped out of...
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March 3, 2021
Monarch and Milkweed
Flowers – especially native plants – are wonderful sources of nectar for monarch butterflies but milkweed leaves are the only food that monarch caterpillars eat. This is an important relationship...
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March 3, 2021
Butterflies
Many of the flowers we love to see each summer depend on visits from butterflies and other insects – they help with pollination. Learn more about the magic of butterflies...
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March 3, 2021
Mini-Installment: Honeybees
Honeybees are the hardest working insects in the natural world and are vital to our delicate ecosystem. These busy bees communicate with each other, they dance and they are generally...
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March 3, 2021
Bumblebees
The Eastern Common Bumblebee is easy to spot in most places in Ohio. Bumblebees are insects. Their bodies are made up of three parts — the head, thorax and abdomen.
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June 26, 2020
Pollinator Research at the Arboretum with Dr. Na Wei
Why do we care about pollinators? Pollinators are important creatures in natural ecosystems and our daily life because they provide vital services to wild plants and our crops. Pollinators carry and...
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