New paintings and regular art updates.
Double flowers, pretty but not good for bees, I have a lot more open flowers. Much better for insects. My garden is looking lovely.
Sometimes called petunias or Surfinias, these plants get covered in flowers in the summer. I think these flowers look like the dresses of Spanish dancers, skirts flying to the music of the Flamenco. So exuberant.
I added shading to a rose painting I started a couple of weeks ago to give it more depth. It is one of those blush roses, with pink and red on the edges of the petals and some yellow further down. Roses are beautiful flowers, but the simplest of them, like wild roses, Rosa rugosa, are better for insects to pollenate and collect nectar. That is because the petals are open and the central part of the flower is easily accessible.
Unfortunately a lot of flowers are now being bred to have twice the petals (doubles). They look beautiful and interesting, but they make it hard to pollenate by insects like bees and they are frequently infertile so they don’t produce viable seeds.
Look for bee friendly plants if you are looking for flowers for your garden.
Are they? I think they are. Seen by my friend during a walk. They were in a garden along the canal. These were such a bright colour she took a photo of them.
Flowers are wonderful thing, such amazing structures, with colours outside of the visible spectrum that attract insects to pollinate them. They sometimes use the ultraviolet end of the spectrum to show insects where their nectar is. The trouble with flowers like these is that there are so many petals that the insects can’t get at the nectar. The human intervention of breeding flowers could have a detrimental effect on insect life. There are plants that are advertised as bee friendly, but sometimes that’s all it is, an advert. Single flowered plants are probably best.
Mallaband-Brown