Bees & "Weeds" In Your Garden

As you may notice in our full list of bee-attractive plants, we found several species of weeds that provided pollen and nectar for urban bees, and were therefore very attractive to them. The most attractive weed species were Picris echioides and Taraxacum sp. (Asteraceae), Lotus corniculatus and Trifolium repens (Fabaceae), and misc. Brassicaceae. We do not recommend that you plant or even encourage these weedy species in your garden, but if they occur there it is worthwhile to leave them through their flowering cycle, in order to see what types of bee visitors they are attracting. There is plenty of time to remove them before they set seeds. We have found some of them, especially P. echioides, L. corniculatus and misc. Brassicaceae, to be highly attractive to native bees in some gardens.