Wildflower areas on golf courses serve a greater purpose than just making out-of-play areas looking pretty. Sure, native wild flowers not only can improve the aesthetic quality of a golf course, but they also can provide a much-needed boost to pollinators.
But not all pollinators are created equally.
North Carolina State University Extension Service has published Common Insects of Wildflower Plantings within North Carolina Turfgrass A Field Guide, a guide to selecting plants to attract a host of different insects that have varying levels of effectiveness as pollinators. The guide is available through the NCSU Extension Service for $15. Although published for growers in North Carolina, it has application outside the state's border.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 75 of the world's flowering plants and 35 percent of food crops rely on insect pollination to reproduce. That is a lot of flowers and more than one in every three bits of food that rely on outside help to sustain their respective populations.
Bees do not actively try to pollinate plants. It is simply a by-product of their physiology. Bees and other insects bounce from plant to plant in search of food in the form of nectar and pollen. Because bees have short legs, their bodies pick up pollen at each stop. During a flower visit, they often brush against the flower's reproductive parts, unwittingly depositing pollen from flower to flower. The plant uses the pollen to produce a fruit or seed. Many plants cannot reproduce without pollen carried to them by foraging pollinators, the USDA says.
Butterflies, on the other hand, although pretty to look at, are not as efficient as bees when it comes to pollinating plants.
According to the U.S. Forest Service, butterflies pick up less pollen on their bodies because they lack specialized structures for collecting it and their long. They also prefer flat, clustered flowers that provide a landing pad and abundant supplies of nectar, while their long, thin legs often prevent their bodies from coming into contact with the plant surface.
"Bees are definitely the most valuable in terms of how much pollen they can offer," said North Carolina State University entomologist Terri Billeisen, Ph.D. "But the advantages with insects like butterflies is the ability to move great distances, and that way we're keeping up that genetic diversity of different plants. And so even if pollinators like butterflies or flies can't carry as much pollen, there are still trace amounts that they are moving over much larger distances that overall help with our pollination efforts. So, even if it's less about quantity, it's still introducing that diversity that always helps with plant longevity."
The NC State manual is a comprehensive guide to selecting specific plants and flowers to attract a variety of insects, including several common species of bees, butterflies, flies, wasps, beetles and a category described as "true bugs." The guide includes preferred food sources of both larvae and adults, and suggested plantings to attract each species.
"Planting native wildflowers is one way to support insect populations," the guide says. "These habitats not only attract pollinators; they also provide habitat, refuge, and other resources to many diverse insect types."
These plantings also improve the aesthetic appeal of golf courses and can be an effective public relations tool.
"With butterflies, it's more of a long-term pollination contribution than bees, which are very immediate," Billeisen said. "They carry a lot, and we can see it in our commercial pollination. Whereas, other insects are contributing to the long-term impact of keeping that pollination effort going.
"Establishing pollinator zones goes a long way in terms of advertising that you're doing something, and the butterflies do that better than anything."