I love hogweed for insects. I plant it all over the place and in garden. evenat night there are moths all over it. It often tops the list for numbers or species and bodies when doing surveys and they over winter inside the stems
Hogweed doesn't often get that high here in South Lanarkshire either (200m altitude), solder beetles out here now though. I'm enjoying retreading some of your books just now, currently on Bee Quest. Thanks
Yeah. People often see hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium) and think that it's GIANT hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). When I worked for a local council we used to get loads of false reports and people would panic. Also... People need a better understanding of "pollinators". There are more flies and hoverflies than there are bees and they are all pollinators.
Thank you for highlighting Common Hogweed. For many years I tried to highlight it, as in my opinion, one of the most important plants for pollinators in our countryside, due to how widespread and abundant it is. Indeed, when I used to do far more macro photography of pollinators, this was my number one choice as it was so attractive to a variety of insect pollinators. Indeed, it is this plant, which reliably told me that there was a serious decline in insect pollinators in the UK. 15 years or more ago, in fine weather, the umbels of Hogweed, would be heaving with Hoverflies, and other Dipterans, bees, wasps, even butterflies, in addition to the Red Soldier beetles. Then slowly, I started to struggle to find many pollinators on each umbel. For macro photography, I would search out the Hogweed plants, with the biggest density of pollinators, because most approaches failed, and I was trying to get very close to the insects, as I wanted close-ups of them feeding, often at over 3:1 magnification. So it was important, when insects flew off, there were others nearby. Otherwise, you'd spend all your time looking for an insect only for it to fly off in your approach, and you would then spend lots of time looking for another. In addition, when an umbel was loaded with pollinators, there was lots of competition, and they were much less easily disturbed. Then, within the last 10 years, I started struggling to find any umbels, even in fine weather, with enough insect pollinators to make it worth trying my macro photography. As I would spend ages looking, and get very photos. Previously I would fill up my memory cards, and have to replace the flash batteries many times. In fact, the lack of this abundance of pollinators is why I do far less of this type of photography now.
@@dotnelsie - The trouble is, the weird weather, a.k.a., climate change, is part of a multi-factorial problem, behind insect declines. We've had the wettest 18 month on record in the UK. The weather, does make it very hard to evaluate insect declines, as it has such an influence on how many are on the wing. Insect populations constantly fluctuate from one area to the next, from one month to the next, from year to year. You only know there's a real decline with hindsight, when you never see a return to the former abundance. A few years ago, I visited Warton Crag, a top butterfly site near Carnforth, on the way to RSPB Leighton Moss. I used to live up there 30 years back. It was a perfect sunny day in June. As we walked up hill, there were banks of wildflowers as it is a great area for the flora. Hardly an insect in sight. I met some PhD students, involved in butterfly studies on Fritillaries. Then I bumped into their PhD supervisor, and asked her about the population trends. She said, there had been big declines in the last few years. Years back, this site used to be buzzing with insects, butterflies in particular. It was nothing like it used to be. Yes, the species are still there, but in lower numbers.
@@stephenbarlow2493 Thank you for your comment. I converted my garden to become a garden beneficial for wildlife. Last year when we had a heatwave the whole of June (I’m in the Highlands) there were many butterflies, orange tip, peacock, R admiral, green veined white,a comma (the first in the garden)and meadow brown. They were regularly seen often in pairs. This year one sighting only of a pair of orange tip, one r admiral, one peacock and one white id unknown. I did have my annual visit from a narrow-bordered bee hawk-moth coming for the bluebell and red campion but just the one day. There have been a few sightings of the common red damselflies hawking over the pond and pairing and a few bee flies when the sun does appear for a few minutes but other than those more obvious insects, very very few. Even the Solomons Seal wasn’t devoured as usual by caterpillars… The flowers and shrubs ion the other hand have flourished with the wet despite the cold/cool temperatures - but are they getting pollinated?? Fortunately the bumblebees have been present in good numbers especially the early b bee but honey bees have been scarce because they cant take the cooler temperatures. Moths too have had a big decline in my garden over the last 10 years. When I came in 2005 there were many big moths in the evening in the garden and bats. Now moths are hardly to be seen and certainly no big ones just the very small ones and few in number despite having lots of honeysuckle, hogweed and native flowers. No bats are seen now going over the garden. I find it concerning but few seem interested in these facts, unlike yourself.
I first took notice of hogweed while out on a walk I saw lots of Blue Tits that seemed to be eating the seeds. But on closer inspection of a plant in my garden I saw that the seed heads were well infested with small caterpillars ( probably in my case mostly the micro moth Depressaria radiella: Parsnip moth.)who were spinning clumps of the developing seeds together and eating them, sometimes the entire seed head was eaten. I think it was these the birds were eating rather than the seeds.
Good to see all the other Hogweed enthusiasts! We often have a Hogweed lawn and it looks lovely in twilight with the white flower heads floating in the gloom. We don't have neighbours tho.
