Beware of Sterile Flowers
When choosing which flowers to add to your garden, the easy choice is to go with is what offers you the biggest showiest flowers…i.e. big bright flowers with lots of petals. The horticulture industry is well aware of this and is very happy to give us what we want. Over the years, many of the cultivars (version of a plant bred for a specific trait) being sold have been specifically created to have visually showier flowers with more petals. To get more petals, the plant breeder has to induce a mutation or select for a mutation that trades its other flower parts (stamens, pistil, sepal, etc.) for more petals. This results in a flower that either has no stamens/pistils or it’s few remaining stamens/pistils are berried within the extra petals and are no longer easily accessible. While visually attractive to humans, the flowers can’t reproduce and offer little for pollinators. From an ecological perspective, the cultivated version is a dead end.
How do you be a good consumer of plants? Purchase cultivars as close to the natural form as possible. Cultivars that are shorter or offer greater cold/heat tolerance are most likely fine to use. But if a cultivar promises big differences in the flower or has a different leaf color, it warrants further investigation before purchasing. We’ve already covered the downside of trading stamens/pistils for petals. Changing color likely changes the chemical composition of the petals or leaves. This might or might not change its attractiveness to pollinators or as a host plant for butterfly/moth larvae.
If you have shrubs or flowers that are loaded with infertile flowers, do you need to remove them? No, you don’t need to go out right away and remove them. That is not what I am advocating. But I hope that the next time you visit the nursery that you approach what they are selling with a questioning attitude…it looks beautiful to me, but will wildlife also find it attractive? What tradeoffs were made to make it so much more visually attractive?
