Oxeye Daisy: Plant for pollinators
Daisieiesies Oxeye is one of the most essential plants for pollinators, including beetles, ants and moths that employ Oxeye daisies as a source of pollen and nectar. Instead of thinking about removing a plant such as Oxeye Daisy, think about how you can improve the fertility and variety of habitat resources in your landscape, garden or farm. If the daisy is now fertile, it will not be over time, and other plants will develop where they used to be.
Tao Orion, author Apart from the war with invasive speciesAND Katrina Blairauthor Wild wisdom of weedsThey share alternative approaches to the management and employ of plants considered “invasive”. Daisy Oxeye discusses in this fragment.
Classification: Vulgar leucanthemum
Geographical location: Western Units, Pacific Northwest
Description: Oxeye Daisy is a long -term herb. Stem is mostly unauthorized and germinate laterally from the crawling rhizome. The leaves are dim green on both sides, with some spoon and teething to the tooth.
Oxeye Daisy has a compact flower head, which consists of about 20 white Ray flowers that surround the yellow disk.
Oxeye Daisy: Critical pollination plant
Author: Tao Orion
Daisy Oxeye (Vulgar leucanthemum) Comes from Europe and Asia and is considered an invasive species in North America, especially in pastureland and on cereal farms.
It is known that Oxeye Daisy follows disturbances, and in Washington, where it is considered “harmful weed class B” and are subject to restrictions of quarantine, a state harmful weed control committee informs that the plant is growing on excessively grazed pastures, waste areas, homes and rights.
Like many invasive species that develop as a result of interference, it would be a good question for the harmful Washington weed control committee – what should we expect in these places? Does Oxeye Daisy really exceed native plants, or excessive grazing, construction and maintenance of roads, and the very concept of “waste” space questions the population of native plants?
A recent analysis of the status of native pollinators has shown that their number has fallen rapidly over the past three decades. Frack, Masonic Bees, sweat bees and other lonely bees, as well as various species of OS and Muchs, provide valuable pollination services in agricultural and non -agricultural contexts.
The study lists the establishment of wild flowers strips, leaving pioneering vegetation intact and maintaining habitats wealthy in flower resources as the best ways to preserve and improve the population of these essential insects.
Daisie Oxeye are known as one of the most essential plants for pollinators in Great Britain, and evidence from North America confirm that various types of pollinators, including beetles, ants and moths, also employ Oxeye daisies as a source of pollen and nectar.
Thus, Oxeye daisies serve valuable ecological functions – potentially more valuable than crops that grow next to or on pasture grasses, with which they seem to compete.
I have Oxeye Daisy on my farm and I noticed that its number has fallen significantly in a few years of careful grazing. The added nutrients from animal manure and urine escalate the growth of perennial grasses and Forbs and daisy Oxeye do not grow so vigorously.
Although I did not plan to deal with Daisye Oxeye’s patches, now the land in which they once grew up, is covered with a lush clover, coil and many grass species.
And although the daisies are few and far away, there are a lot of food and habitats for pollinators and other insects, as well as birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians.
The conventional agricultural model, which perceives plants such as Daisy Oxeye as competitors of more desirable species of crops, must recognize a greater ecological context in which the farm exists – if you remove Daisy Oxeye, what is left for pollinators?
Too often there is nothing, and the disturbing trends of the population of pollinators will probably be continued until state-of-the-art goods production systems are designed to encourage the spread of biological diversity, and not to achieve growing profits from individual crops.
So instead of thinking about removing a plant such as Oxeye Daisy, think about how you can improve the fertility and variety of habitat resources in your landscape, garden or farm. If the daisy is now fertile, it will not be over time, and other plants will develop where they used to be.
Thanks to Daisye Oxeye, as in the case of all invasive species, it is more essential to think about what you need to add to – instead of what you want to take – the ecosystem to improve its diversity, abundance and immunity.
Understanding the inseparable value in every plant
Katrina Blair
I spent the day “collecting” Oxeye Daisy in the Ecological Management project of Elated Lands bees. Hundreds of compact worms, insects, flies, bees, beetles and butterflies gathered on flowers for nectar. I pulled out or chose these pretty flowers because they are on a harmful weed list in Colorado.
They are illegal here. We have made legal marijuana, but what about all wild weeds? Daisies Oxeye look very like Shast’s daisies, but smaller. They smell like honey or pollen and keep their honesty as a cut flower bouquet for a long time.
When I chose them, I had to come to the room with the fact that I really worried this amazing ecosystem of the present. I felt a little better thinking about everyone for whom I would give a bouquet of flowers.
I collect these plants only because of the rule of another person that I have to admit that I do not agree. However, the real motivation is to prevent the application of herbicides on earth, waterways and throughout their lives here in the mountains.
I accept that this is a service for me to be a bridge of renovated education about the debate of “native species vs. non -family”. I would like to convey the perspective that all plants have an inseparable value. Time to change the rules.
I am more and more aware that our way of thinking about native and not native is defective and antiquated and apparently no longer serves the holistic model of global reconstruction of the earth. It is too common that these marked “non -family” species are the subject of a negative view, and then are subject to herbicides and other elimination techniques.
Let’s consider the perspective that all plants serve a larger purpose because nature intends to do them. Let us have the view that all plants grow in divine excellent order with the nature of the universe.
This approach releases our culture from assessing whether the plants are not there, whether they are good or bad. We must remember that the change is constant. Nature will constantly adapt with modern plants growing in a given area, when modern climate change occurs and modern interference occurs.
Beginning to the great rotation of the flows of changes, we can freely appreciate and enjoy our pretty house of the earth.