Both sides of the coin

It was Joni Mitchell who sang the sensible words ‘I’ve looked at life from both sides now’. It was a wise thing to contemplate. The Netherlands-based European Invertebrate Survey (EIS Foundation) would surely agree.  This highly respected centre for insects and other invertebrates recently revealed bumblebee results for 2023 which indeed show two sides of the same coin.

Operating out of Leiden, the agency shares knowledge on insects and other invertebrates and conducts and promotes research to aid policy and management to help insects in The Netherlands. Mention the EIS in pollinator circles across Europe, and you can be pretty confident that you will receive a glowing appraisal.  

I was intrigued recently to hear of their preliminary overview of the 2023 season ‘A bumblebee year with two faces’. For a group which supports more than 60 working groups and works with somewhere in the region of 3,000 volunteers I’m always interested to hear that they have to say.

2023 marked the sixth consecutive year in which EIS had been collating and monitoring bumblebee numbers. As the 2023 season for activity drew to a close, they were quickly able to establish a few interesting headline facts to share. As is often the case when studying nature, the picture was not always straightforward.  Indeed, first up was the need to concede that counting numbers in the first half of the season had been low, only to surge upwards as the year progressed. It was what football commentators would call ‘a game of two halves’.

This was largely due to a wet and cold spring that supressed insect numbers. An army of volunteers were noting that bumblebee numbers appeared much lower than on average for the time of year. 400 dedicated volunteers across the Netherlands were unanimous in this finding, based on their meticulous monthly observations along agreed fixed routes.

Using flight graphs, the EIS volunteers gather information which quickly suggested that the six most common bumblebees were seen less than on average as the 2023 bumblebee season got underway. To quote the report ‘numbers lagged behind the average of previous years’.  The usual spurt in numbers seen in May, as colonies gather momentum, simply wasn’t there. Fortunately, it was pushed back to later in the year, indeed June saw good numbers.

Summer brought even better news. The peak numbers of all bumblebees seen in the summer proved higher the average if previous years. And quite remarkably the actual peak fell once more slap in mid-July, despite that slow start to the season.  That said there will likely be concern about increasingly wet springs and hotter summers.

There was a welcome return for some consistency in numbers and species seen. The three most common species: Common Carder Bee (Bombus pascuorum), Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) and Buff-tailed bumblebee-group (Bombus terrestris-group) (Note that for the purposes of this study this is an aggregate of terrestris, lucorum, magnus and cryptarum).  were once again over ten times more likely to be recorded then the other relatively common Netherlands species the Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum), the Garden Bumblebee (Bombus hortorum) and the Tree Bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum).

The volunteer network observed that the most commonly-sighted bumblebee was the Common Carder Bee. The average sightings in the past five years was ten bumbles per kilometre of counting. In 2023 it was twenty. The tree bumblebee on the other hand enjoyed what could best be termed an average season. Spring saw numbers and flying time as comparatively normal based on recent years for that species. 

EIS researchers noted that the four other common bumblebee species: Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius), Garden Bumblebee (Bombus hortorum), Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) and Buff-tailed Bumblebee-group (Bombus terrestris-group), all exhibited a late increase in numbers. The Buff-tailed grouping and the Red-tailed bumblebees were roughly one or two weeks behind their previous years in terms of numbers. The terrestrial bumblebee unfortunately had one of its poorer years since monitoring began. 

Just as Queen bumblebees are tucked up for winter so the Leiden folks begin to hunker down for winter – although in their instance it is time to calculate trends rather than peacefully slumber.  This is done with help from Central Bureau of Statistics, which will help coordinate and analyse figures from the busy Bumblebee Monitoring Network.  Winter may be drab and dreary but the number crunching is anything but.

Five years into the bumblebee monitoring programme the good news is that the surveying work is paying off. 

Indeed, looking ahead, the bumblebee monitoring network was delighted to form part of the Netherlands standard Ecological Monitoring Network (NEM) for the first time in 2023. This network endeavours to help scientists and environmentalists in the Netherlands analyse the trends of all kinds of groups of animals and plants. The bumblebee monitoring network is delighted to be part of this wider work and recognises that it has learned much from earlier butterfly monitoring networks run out of Leiden. There is a strong appreciation of shared methodology and personnel in Netherlands bumblebee circles. 

Work of this nature is essential in the Netherlands. Bumblebees, it is widely acknowledged, require special attention. Two-thirds of the Netherlands bumblebees are on the Red List and in the past century around 25% of their bumblebee species have disappeared.

That is why it is vitally important to properly map the numbers and range of the remaining species. The information gleaned from a dedicated and well-trained network of monitoring volunteers will surely form the basis for future bumblebee protection in the Netherlands. And that’s good news no matter which side of life you look at it from.

Find out more:

EIS Insect Knowledge Center

De Vlinderstichting

With sincere thanks to Johan van ‘t Bosch, EIS Kenniscentrum Insecten en andere ongewervelden, p/a Naturalis Biodiversity Center, for both his help with the text and the images.

Come in – if you insist

By Athayde Tonhasca

Philip Miller (1691-1771), author of the renowned The Gardeners Dictionary and Fellow of the Royal Society, was a keen experimenter in plant propagation. In a 1715 letter to a friend, Miller described his observations of bees visiting tulip flowers, “which persuades him that the Farina may be carried from Place to Place by Insects” – Farina is the Farina Fecundens (fertilizing flour), or pollen, which fellow naturalists suspected played an important part in plant reproduction. Meanwhile in America, Arthur Dobbs (1689-1765), Governor of North Carolina, promoter of expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage and amateur scientist, came to a similar conclusion: “I think that Providence has appointed the Bee to be very instrumental in promoting the Increase of Vegetables”.

His excellency Arthur Dobbs esq., captain general, governor in chief and vice admiral of the Province of North Carolina in America, circa 1753 © The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Philip Miller and Arthur Dobbs were two of the pioneer naturalists who recognised and assessed the role of insects in plant reproduction. We learned a great deal since then, so that today plant-pollinator associations are considered some of the best examples of mutualisms, that is, relationships between two species that benefit both. ‘Mutualism’ invokes noble concepts such as cooperation, teamwork, union, and common good; so, analogies with human behaviour were just too tempting. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) cited examples of mutualism in the natural world as arguments against ruthless competition in human societies, while ecologist Warder Clyde Allee (1885-1955) and colleagues, in their influential Principles of Animal Ecology, made numerous references to human cooperation in discussions about mutualism (Boucher et al., 1982). These comparisons with human values risk distorting the true character of mutualism in the natural world, as is the case with pollination. There’s little collaboration here: plants give away as little pollen and nectar as possible because these products are metabolically expensive; sometimes they cheat, giving no reward at all to flower visitors. Pollinators on the other hand would take as much resource as possible, with no altruistic regard for plants’ needs. Instead of cooperation, this type of relationship is best described as mutual exploitation (Westerkamp, 1996). Or, as Danforth et al. (2019) put it, ‘pollinators are like an overly demanding lover – they are great to have around at times, but if left without boundaries, they can take over your life and ruin it.’

Plants are in a delicate position: they need to attract insects to transfer their pollen but must be parsimonious in their rewards, otherwise these will be quickly depleted. To sort out this dilemma, many species evolved a range of adaptations to regulate access to pollen and nectar, and to discourage floral robbers (consumers that do not pollinate). Some plants exclude unsuitable visitors by restricting their pollen to specialised buzz pollinators; others rely on explosive pollen release, while some take the route of morphological tinkering such as keel flowers.

Keel flowers have five petals: a large one on top called the banner (also known as the vexillum or standard petal), two concave ones on the sides (the lateral wings or alae), and two at the base: these are stuck together to form the keel, which encloses the reproductive organs.

Parts of a keel flower: 1. Banner; 2. Wings; 3. Keel © Kembangraps, Wikimedia Commons.

Keel flowers are common in the subfamily Papilionoideae (or Faboideae) of the legume family (Fabaceae). They are also known as papilionate flowers, from their resemblance to butterflies – papilio in Latin. Papilionoideae comprises an estimated 14,000 species, or over 70% of all legumes. They are found in a range of habitats, and many of them are important sources of human and animal food, such as soybean (Glycine max), beans (Phaseolus spp.), clovers (Trifoliumspp.) alfalfa (Medicago sativa) and peanut (Arachis hypogaea).

The ungainly shapes of keel flowers seem to have been designed to make life a bit difficult for pollinators. Not to put them off completely – that would be suicidal – but to make them work hard for their reward. To access the nectar, a visitor must grab the flower, push the keel down, while simultaneously prising apart the lateral wings, engaging their legs and mouth in elaborate contortions. These manoeuvres expose the stigma (female parts) and the anthers (male parts), which touch the visitor and ensure pollen transfer. 

Brown hemp (Crotalaria juncea) pollination. a: Megachile bicolor grabbing the base of the banner with its mandibles; b, c: M. bicolor and M. lanata pushing against the lateral wings with their legs and abdomen, so that style and anthers touch the bees’ scopa (pollen gathering bristles); d: the carpenter bee Xylocopa fenestrata repeating the process © Kumar et al., 2019.

These operations require strength and technique; visitors that do not have the physical apparatus or sufficient power such as butterflies and flies are mostly excluded from keel flowers. Hummingbirds and other birds are also barred, as they can’t open the petals with their beaks and the keels are not big enough for landing (Westerkamp, 1997). Only bees, and only the larger ones at that, can deal with the challenge. Watch bumble bees expertly working their way around lupin (Lupinus sp.) flowers, and note the spike-like structure – the keel – poking out between the lateral wings as bees push them apart. On touching the keel, bees are dusted with pollen. And here, a leafcutter bee (family Megachilidae) illustrates the labour required to get the nectar in a brown hemp flower.

Keel flowers block the less desirable visitors, saving pollen and nectar for the reliable larger bees. It’s not surprising then that so many plant species have adopted this aesthetically peculiar but highly effective flower shape.

On the bee trail in Caithness

Sibster is a relatively new broadleaf woodland on the site of an old Caithness farm – you might not immediately associate it with bees and helping our pollinators.  But that is exactly what it does. Join the 3km bee trail here and you are invited to ‘Bumble along through the wildflower meadows by the Sibster Burn that are protected as a bumblebee conservation area.’

Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) are the people behind the inspirational project, although they are quick to acknowledge the help of a band of dedicated volunteers.

They have been planting brightly-coloured wildflowers amongst the young growing trees here. Not just for their aesthetic appeal, but to help boost numbers of a rare species of bumblebee and boost the fortunes of other pollinating insects.  

It’s been a labour of love. The wildflowers in question have been lovingly tended by dedicated North Region FLS staff in polytunnels in nearby Lairg. Once ready they were then planted out in the autumn by eager volunteers from the Caithness Environment Volunteer Group in two meadows at Sibster. And this is welcome news in the battle to conserve the Great Yellow Bumblebee. 

The Great Yellow Bumblebee was at one time widespread across the UK. But changes in land use and a fragmentation of their preferred habitat saw their range dramatically reduced, to the point where now in the UK this a bee alarmingly only found in the western and northern fringes of the Scotland.

It’s one of the key species for the Species on the Edge project, and the work being carried out in Caithness is a fantastic boost. 

Neil McInnes, was a key player in getting the project at Sibster up and running, and knows that this is no short-term fix. It takes planning and considerable determination to get an ambitious project such as this off the ground.

“It really takes a while for a healthy meadow to get going’” he explained, “it’s the same for it to become well established so we’ve been working on this project for several years now. 

“Adjusting the mix of plants is a slow, steady process. Working with Bumblebee Conservation Trust and local ecology volunteers and tapping into the expertise of new FLS staff with horticultural industry experience has given us a great mix of skills and knowledge – from basic botany to plant propagation and species conservation – that are helping to shape and transform the two meadows.  

“It goes to show the range of our conservation work, and highlights that sometimes it’s the things that you can do at the very local level that can make all the difference in helping endangered species. 

“Our partners will regularly monitor the meadows in the years to come and help keep a close eye on the fortunes of these particularly rare bees.”  

At NatureScot we can’t thank Neil and his colleagues enough. Theirs’s is a marvellous example of partnership working and going beyond the norm to make a big difference.

The new meadows are located in two of several large, open areas within a forest that was originally planted in 2011 on a former agricultural site.  The work to introduce the meadow took careful planning. Starting in 2014, initial steps involved controlling and reducing the fast-growing rye grass and creating the spaces that would allow the less vigorous, pollinator-attracting flowering plants to take root and establish. 

These early works were enhanced in 2017 thanks to the planting of a Hawthorn and Blackthorn hedge alongside one of the meadows both to provide more blossom and to create a ‘bank’ and tussocky grasses, where Great Yellow Bumblebees mght nest.  

Mary Legg, Secretary of the Caithness Environment Volunteers, is rightly proud of their input. “The volunteers are happy to spend a few hours a month helping a variety of projects that allow the biodiversity of Caithness to flourish. In this case it was planting out wildflower plugs and, as Sibster woodland is already popular with local people, this should increase the opportunity for them to see and hear a variety of pollinating insects including the great yellow bumble bee.”

And Mary is spot on in highlighting a crucial target when she rightly suggests that the work at Sibster “… might also encourage visitors to allow a little space in their own gardens for wildflowers.” 

The meadow here is a rich mix of plants such as red clover, vetches and knapweed that are amongst the preferred food plants of the Great Yellow Bumblebee.

What a fantastic project and what a great demonstration of the versatility of our colleagues at Forest and Land Scotland.  The Great Yellow Bumblebee will benefit, but we can be equally confident that a range of other pollinators will hone in on this site too.

Thank You: With sincere thanks to Reginald Stratton and Neil McInnes for their help in compiling this blog and for permission to use their images.

Find out more about Forestry and Land Scotland:

Find out more about the Great Yellow Bumblebee:

Find out more about Species on the Edge:

More than a car park

Car parks used to be car parks and nothing more, end of story.  Today, however, you are much more likely to find them fringed with trees and flowers. We’ve woken up to the potential to make much better use of these spaces in our villages, towns and cities.

I was reminded of this recently when I received an update about the excellent raingarden work in Kinross, which continues with boundless enthusiasm.

You may recall that the first phase of the Kinross Park & Ride Raingarden project was given the prestigious Susdrain UK Community Award in 2022. This was in recognition of a trial of perennial and annual native wildflower plantings as part of a new raingarden in the middle of the Park & Ride car park. It’s been good for nature and a rather pleasant consequence is that the council only needs to cut this area annually instead of 16 times a year. And it looks good visually for those who are passing through, although perennials don’t meet the expectations of the colour blastthat the new annuals created in the first year.

Now, Perth and Kinross Council have approved a further allocation of Nature Restoration Fund money to continue raingardens work in Kinross. Much of the new work will focus on further improving the area around the Park and Ride site, “building on success” you might say.

The green spaces around the Park and Ride are already popular and much appreciated for their nature benefits. The group behind the work are keen to stress that these are biodiversity improvement measures rather than cost-cutting practices. And the work isn’t finished. Moves are afoot to stop herbicide applications and bring an end to the bare soil strips of the car park edges, including the small ‘islands’ in the centre. Instead, the vision is to have pollen and nectar rich vegetation which would be maintained by the Council with an annual cut-and-remove regime where needed. Some occasional weeding of edges may be needed, and advice is being sought for suitable plants to establish there instead of the weeds.

There are two heavily shaded areas on the fringes of the car park, where it looks possible to introduce woodland floor flora more appropriate to the locality and soil. For those who know the area this is in effect the long edge of the car park beneath existing well-established tall trees.

Thought has been given to not only pollinator provision but the aesthetic value of the area for residents whose houses overlook the front of the car park. For that less shaded front edge of the car park therefore, swathes of colour from spring flowering bulbs are also proposed. This will complement the existing Kinross in Bloom containers on the hard surface near the bus stop.

The Park and Ride is the start of the Kinross Raingardens Trail. In parallel with the improvements for pollinators at the Park and Ride, work has been scheduled to enhance the wetlands along the Raingardens Trail on Junction Road. Two constructed wetlands there take overflow drainage from a wildflower-rich set of swales which serve the central length of Junction road, as well as a cluster of commercial properties. Over the years since the wetlands were created, extensive growth of reedmace (Typha latifolia) had suppressed other plants and wildlife. The benefits of last year’s work there should become apparent in spring this year; there will be a buzz of excitement there, hopefully! Early growth looks promising in particular for yellow flag, purple loosestrife, and lesser reedmace amongst others.

A third constructed wetland was created in spring 2023, in an area designated as a flood water space for extremely high flows in the local South Queich river tributary of Loch Leven. Additional work is scheduled there for February 2024, creating another new pond, and seeding with native water margin species. Again, it is anticipated that spring 2024 will be an exciting time to see the emergence of a variety of wild flowers and other native plants, as well as the associated insects and other animals. Already in January ladies smock is growing well, from plugs planted in new scrapes last year, as plugs of purple loosestrife and marsh marigold. This previously neglected area will become a biodiverse treasure on the edge of town, surrounded by a mix of housing, commercial and industrial development and road infrastructure.

It’s this healthy desire to work to enhance the habitats and waters of Kinross-shire and Loch Leven, but simultaneously also strive for further improvement, which has made such a difference. And the improvements are stretching beyond the park and ride and the Raingardens Trail. At the Kinross rugby club, work has begun to create a biodiverse hedgerow swale along the car park edge in spring, tapping into the knowledge gained from earlier swale projects in Kinross. The car park extension and the club-house work have taken rainfall runoff away from the local combined sewer, into the swale system. The project is looking for more green infrastructure projects to help further with removing rainfall input to old sewers which overflow into Loch Leven from Kinross, a National Nature Reserve and Ramsar Wetland.

The group would love to have information signs on site to explain the changes and the benefits. These are likely to stress that the works here help deliver the national pollinator strategy. A sign of the times you might say.

Further reading:

Kinross Raingarden’s Trail

Making wildlife connections at Dance Connect

All images above Copyright (c) C A G Lloyd

(Left)Park & ride in summer, and right – Dance connect pollinators patch

Lesser celandines

Red campion

Bluebells grown from Scotia Seeds and
transplanted in the Dance Connect wooded mound. 

Vast armies with many skills

By Athayde Tonhasca

As natural history narratives go, the 1954 ant-inspired sci-fi motion picture Them! was not up to David Attenborough’s standards because giant, deranged, radioactive ants don’t exist. Despite the factual liberties, the film was a commercial success and had the novelty of depicting two myrmecologists (ant specialists) as heroes who helped to save the planet from a myrmecological doomsday. Malevolent ants have a long history in Western popular culture. In The Empire of the Ants (1905), H.G. Wells tells us the story of a gunboat forced to turn around and abandon an Amazonian village overwhelmed by intelligent killer ants.

A bad ant infestation in the New Mexico desert © San Bernardino Sun, 1954. Wikimedia Commons.

Those who have witnessed an army ant raid or had the unfortunate experience of stepping (or even worse, sitting) on a fire ant mound, understand why ants elicit fear or a grudging respect; many of the 14,147 – and counting – species of ants (family Formicidae) are territorial and highly aggressive to perceived intruders, man or beast.

Lieutenant da Cunha being overwhelmed and killed by evil Amazonian ants in H. G. Wells’ The Empire of the Ants © Amazing Stories, 1926.Wikimedia Commons.

But aggression is only one aspect of ants. They can be predators or feed on seeds, nectar, honeydew, or fungi they cultivate. They are found everywhere except Antarctica and a few remote islands, and are incredibly important in decomposing organic matter, recycling nutrients, and controlling plant-eating insects (many of them agricultural pests). Ants are essential ecosystem engineers: many species build nests and dig tunnels in the ground, increasing aeration and drainage, and improving soil fertility with their waste and food stores. Some seed-eaters are important for plant reproduction: they stock their nests with seeds that are not all eaten. The spared lucky ones germinate in a nutrient-rich, herbivore-free environment. More than 3,000 plant species depend on myrmecochory, which is seed dispersal by ants. Plant-eating by ants is not always benign; leafcutter ants (genera Atta and Acromyrmex) are incredibly destructive; in Brazil, saúvas (their local name) have been the scourge of agriculture since the beginning of European colonisation. French naturalist Augustin Saint-Hilaire (1779-1853) supposedly said that ‘Brazil must kill the saúva or the saúva will kill Brazil’, which was a slogan adopted in successive – and unsuccessful – eradication campaigns. 

Digging a leafcutter ant nest in Brazil. Concrete was poured into the nest to create a cast of the inside. The nest covers more than 67 m² and contains 1920 chambers © O’Brien & Bentley, 2015.

All these ecological services and impacts are intensified by ants’ mindboggling numbers. The distinguished myrmecologist E. O. Wilson estimated that 10¹⁵ to 10¹⁶ ants crawl on Earth’s surface at any given time (that’s quadrillions, figures usually discussed in astronomy). A later appraisal fine-tuned the number to 20 × 10¹⁵ individuals, which corresponds to ∼12 megatons of carbon. This is more than the combined biomass of all wild birds and mammals, and is equivalent to ∼20% of human biomass (Schultheiss et al., 2022). Another study following a different methodology suggested a population size of 5 × 10¹⁶, excluding arboreal ants (Rosenberg et al., 2023). So Wilson wasn’t far off, as a billion here or a billion there is not that important when we are talking quadrillions. For comparison, there are some 7.9 × 10⁹ human beings on the planet. 

A representation of powers of 10 to help us grasp the magnitude of ants’ abundance: each block is ten times the size of the previous block, up to a billion (10⁹). One quadrillion would be 1.000.000 bigger than the billion block © Cmglee, Wikimedia Commons.

Ants are everywhere and interact with a vast number of animal and plant species, but they seem to be largely absent from one ecological process: pollination. Which is a bit puzzling, considering that bees, their close relatives, are the main pollinators of a large number of plants. Many reasons have been proposed for the dearth of ant pollination, from their grooming (self-cleaning) behaviour to scant ‘hairiness’ (body bristles), resulting in few pollen grains being transported. But bees groom themselves, and some ants are as hairy as bees. The ‘antibiotic hypothesis’ is the most accepted explanation for ants’ unsuitability for pollination. Most ant species feature a specialised gland located in the metapleuron (a thoracic plate; pl. metapleura). The metapleural gland – and to a lesser extent some other parts of the body – secrete chemicals that serve as signals for nest-mate recognition and territory marking, and especially as antiseptics that prevent the proliferation of bacteria and fungi. But these substances have a disagreeable side effect: they also inhibit pollen germination and the growth of pollen tubes.

Parts of a typical ant, highlighting the all-important metapleural gland © Mariana Ruiz, Wikimedia Commons.

Ants’ chemical defences seem to make them incompatible with the job of pollination. Which is a pity for the plants’ point of view, as ants often crawl all over them in search of nectar from their flowers and, in some cases, from specialised nectar-secreting glands. But inevitably and predictably, natural selection intervenes to fill the voids of missed opportunities.

Honewort (Trinia glauca) is an unassuming herb found on dry, rocky sites with sparse vegetation in southern England. Elsewhere, it ranges from continental Europe to southwest Asia. On some of the English sites, flowers of this rare plant are visited mostly by ants, especially Lasius alienus, which are also their main pollinators (Carvalheiro et al., 2008). 

Honewort on limestone, a habitat shared with its main pollinator, L. alienus © BerndH, Wikimedia Commons.

Honewort is an addition to the ever increasing number of reported cases of myrmecophily, or pollination by ants. These ant-friendly plants may have developed tolerance to the ill effects of metapleural gland compounds. This seems to be the case for the waxy-leaved smokebush (Conospermum undulatum) in Australia: in an experimental setting, pollen from some plant species suffered substantial decreases in germination after contacting the integument (‘skin’) of Camponotus molossus and other ants. Pollen of waxy-leaved smokebush however was not affected. Not surprisingly, ants contributed significantly to the plant’s pollination (Delnevo et al., 2020).

A, B: waxy-leaved smokebush flowers. Bee visitors: Leioproctus conospermi (C) and Apis mellifera (H), which only steals nectar. Ant visitors: C. molossus (D), C. terebrans (E), Iridomyrmex purpureus (F) and Myrmecia infima (G) © Delnevo et al., 2020.

Brute force is another possible explanation for myrmecophily. A single ant may be a poor pollinator, but a mass of them visiting flowers repeatedly may end up doing the job properly. Apparently this is the scenario in high mountains and arid zones, where ants make up a significant proportion of flower visitors (Gómez et al., 1996).

In their monumental 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Ants, Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson skimmed over myrmecophily, as it was taken as a minor feature. Bees, flies and moths are by far the champion pollinators, but more and more studies suggest ants are important for some plants in some habitats. So we can add pollination to ants’ long list of ecological services – unhinged, angry and radioactive ants notwithstanding.

Edward Osborne Wilson (1929-2021), myrmecologist, environmentalist, secular-humanist, and pioneer in the fields of ecology, evolution and sociobiology. Despite underhand attacks from some of his peers while he was alive and attempts at character assassination after his death, Wilson remains one of the greatest and most inspiring scientists of our times © Jim Harrison, Wikimedia Commons.

The perplexing poppy

The poppy is arguably one of the most recognisable flowers in the land.  For most it perhaps conjures up images of searingly bright scarlet petals, summer meadows, Remembrance Sunday. But although we speak of ‘the poppy’, the fact is poppies come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

For pollinators such distinctions matter little, for them all poppies with their easily accessed bowl-shaped flowers, are quite simply good news. A rich source of pollen, they attract a wide range of insect visitors. And they do well to attract pollinators, for they offer little or no nectar.

Poppies are one of our prettiest ‘weeds’, traditional annual cornfield wildflowers, which are widespread throughout the UK. As you might expect, their flowering time varies across the nation, but you will most likely see them from May through mid-summer. The common poppy (Papaver rhoeas), also known as the scarlet, corn or field poppy can be a delightful and cheerful bright sight, the staple of many a cottage-garden. Also frequent in Scotland is the long-headed poppy (Papaver dubium).  This is a slightly duller red than the common poppy, but is still a joy to see whether it is growing in a field or out of a crack between two paving stones.

Other poppy variants include oriental poppies, Californian versions, and the bright yellow Welsh variety. There is a bit of an east-west split in Scotland. The common and long-headed poppies do not thrive as well in the west, preferring the drier conditions of the east of Scotland. 

Each November the poppy is thrust into the national consciousness. The poppy symbolises the mayhem and waste of World War One. The brutally disturbed battlefields awoke the dormant poppy seed bank and the poppies subsequently germinated and came to the surface. It’s blood red petals, resilience, and battlefield colonisations were never forgotten.

This association was cemented in 1915 when the poet Lt Col John McCrae published “In Flanders Fields”.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

It has provided enduring imagery. In 2014 eye-catching swatches of ceramic poppies were arranged at the Tower of London, in an installation entitled “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” .

The poppy has featured in Armistice Day services since 1921. The Lady Haig Poppy Factory, was established in Edinburgh in 1926 and Scottish-made poppies were sold on the capital’s streets that year. 

For some, the sight of a poppy in a wildflower meadow is anathema and isn’t viewed as  a ‘true’ component of such habitat. The poppies are blissfully unaware and remarkably resilient. Where land is disturbed, they often make an appearance, and poppies can be one of the initial successes in newly sown meadows. However, they are soon outcompeted and are less prominent in subsequent years. But they are not really gone. Poppy seeds can lie dormant for many years (some estimates say as long as 80 years), and at the slightest opportunity, should the land be disturbed, they will return.

Poppies, with their blousy petals, can appear fragile, but the plant is as ‘tough as old boots’. I once read a gardening article in The Glasgow Herald that referred to the tap roots as being ‘as strong as steel cables’. An exaggeration of course, but it made the point well.

There is a darker side to the poppy story – for it is associated with opium, heroin, drugs. 

The opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) has a name which has its origins in a reference to ‘sleep-inducing’. The flower head, or more specifically its seed pods, are the source of raw opium.

The East India Company processed large quantities of opium in India in the 18th century primarily for medicinal purposes, but things spiralled.  Ultimately opium was being smuggled into China. This reached an unhappy conclusion when Britain and China fought ‘Opium Wars’ in the 19th century.

Going further back, the poppy, and its properties, are often mentioned in Roman, Greek and Egyptian history.  It may have been used to help with sleeping and we know too that it was revered in agricultural circles as it grew along with vital arable crops, and some observers suggested its proximity gave nourishment to the soil and grain. Ancient Greek figures such as Hypnos (Sleep) and Nyx (Night), were portrayed with poppies prominently displayed. 

The poppy is thus, for a variety of reasons, one of the best-known plants in the world.