No one would call me adventurous, but I decided to take a risk and put our native prairie rose, Rosa setigera, in a relatively high spot in the rain garden. It started budding up in slow motion—handy when budworm eggs were being laid—the buds were not even there yet when my earliest rose buds elsewhere in the yard were being infiltrated. Some of the size difference is due to the number of petals in the flower, but much of the difference is due to timing of development.
The sprays of prairie roses start out as hot pink single flowers with a beautiful yellow crown of stamens and a very obvious pale green pistal, then fade to a pale pink or white flower with pink spots and a small heap of dried-up stamens curled up and into the pistal.
The plant is looking very robust and healthy, despite a heat wave that has brought intensely humid days to us and powdery mildew to the Canada anemone directly to the rose’s south.
Rosa setigera is extremely attractive to a small hymenopteran with a green thorax and head, and thin white or pale yellow bands around a basic black abdomen. They are a little smaller than a honey bee. These bees are not at all aggressive, but like other bees, they are very busy creatures. Master beekeeper Rusty Burlew refers to them as metallic green bees; whether that is a common name or a descriptive one, I cannot say.
This is one of many creatures that is showing up—or perhaps just making themselves visible—later in the year than usual in my garden. It is also one of my more common bees. I see more of these than I see honey bees, for example.
Related: a Citizen Science Project Worth Exploring
While I was looking for information about the green bees, I came across a great project if you have room in your garden for sunflowers. The Great Sunflower Project is collecting pollinator information from people who are willing to plant a specific variety of sunflower and then do three separate pollinator counts. San Fransisco State University is the main sponsor of this multiyear project, so if you cannot get sunflowers in this year, there will be next year.
It is worth looking at their Support Us page, if only for the fabulous photograph of an extremely furry and pretty bee on a compound flower.