For several years now, one of my favorite plants has been Gayfeather (Liatris). It’s great for growing on the sunny side of  the mulch ring around young fruit trees because bees love it. Great because the bees will then pollinate your fruit tree while they are visiting. Evidence of this bee attraction below! In mid-July the blooms are fading now, but just a few weeks ago when these photos were taken, every time I’d walk by there could be a dozen or more bees enjoying the long spiky blooms.

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Bee bloomer shot:

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These photos are of course bumblebees, but the wild honeybees have been showing up this year too, to my delight. (Next year we may become beekeepers! I’m so excited. Gotta take the class, etc. ) I have two friends now who keep bees who I hope will become mentors…  But back to liatris! It’s a native prairie plant and once established, is pretty tough and doesn’t need any coddling. It will get lanky and fall over if it isn’t in full sun for at least 5-6 hours (at least at my house this is true.)  It grows from tiny bulbs and once you have a clump, it’s easy to dig up in the fall, divide into several little bulb clumps, and suddenly you have many.

Liatris blooms, after serving as buffet and bounty to the bees, will attract goldfinches once the flower stalks turn to seeds. A good reason to not get all prissy and clip them off once the blooms fade!  Watching a sunshine yellow goldfinch plucking seeds off the top of a flower that still is purple along the bottom is a color frenzy I still hope to capture on the camera.  They produce zillions of seeds though I haven’t had them spread around here..though I wish they would!

And if all that isn’t enough to sell you on liatris (which you sometimes see on sale in the bulb bin of Lowe’s) then how about this: After watching the bees clamber all over the blooms in the daytime, at dusk you will find the same fat bumblebees curled up sleeping in between the blooms, looking as if they are dreaming of tomorrow’s sunshine and nectar.

A final shot of my furry friends:

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