Everything about the creepy-crawlies provide pollination, one of the most important ecosystem services. Mostly insects, but occasionally can be birds or even lizards.
Morning time on a pleasant temperature summer day, I was watching the cloud of buzzing insects around flowering coffee trees (Coffea sp.) while others were harvesting grapes beside me. Like so many times before, I tried to count how many different insect taxa I could identify around the flowers. I did not have to work …
In addition to wild pollinators visiting agricultural lands, ’commercial bumblebees’ (e.g. Bombus terrestris audax in Europea) have been used in glass houses and open-field cultivations worldwide since the 1980s. Indeed, bumblebees (Bombus sp.) are the most efficient pollinators for a wide variety of popular crops, such as tomatoes and strawberries, and it is also well-known …
Of the many gorgeous herbaceous plants and flowering fruit trees, the buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) in our garden chose the blooming cabbage (Brassica oleracea) as their favourite nectar and pollen source this spring. Cabbage is a cross-pollinated crop, which means it is not capable of self-fertilisation, thus pollination via insects is one of the best …
📚 Have a read of my book review about an inspiring and thought-provoking book, entitled Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society (2021) by Prof. Jeff Ollerton, published in Community Ecology (Springer Nature). As a teaser, here is a snippet from my review: “By learning about the most important research and field experience of a 30-year-long career, …
The chayote (Sechium edule) is a great species of Cucurbitaceae, because almost all parts of the plant are edible. Besides the fruit, a lot of nations consume the root, the seeds, the stem, and the heart-shaped leaves. The chayote was unknown to me until it crawled over a three-meter-tall, stone wall from the neighbour. Thence, …