Sign up for our daily Newsletter and stay up to date with all the latest news!

Subscribe I am already a subscriber

You are using software which is blocking our advertisements (adblocker).

As we provide the news for free, we are relying on revenues from our banners. So please disable your adblocker and reload the page to continue using this site.
Thanks!

Click here for a guide on disabling your adblocker.

Sign up for our daily Newsletter and stay up to date with all the latest news!

Subscribe I am already a subscriber
Tested by Mt. Cuba:

US: Does the new phlox feed insects well?

"Phlox is considered one of the greatest American perennials,” explains Keith Nevison, a Longwood Graduate Program fellow who studies phlox. “Early explorers seized it and began to breed it in Europe, as early as the 17th century.”

Today, horticulturists have discovered or created hundreds of new garden varieties, or “cultivars." New cultivars have been bred for improved color and disease-resistance.

“These may look wonderful in your garden,” Nevison says,” but they raise a number of ecological questions.”

Phlox, he notes, are only pollinated by butterflies and moths, which use the flowers’ nectar as a food source. Any impact these new phlox cultivars have on pollinators, however, is not yet understood. It is unclear if new cultivated varieties of phlox provide the same level of nutrition for those insects as varieties found in the wild, in the same manner that apples bred for improved color may have lost some of their taste.

Click here to read the complete article at www.delawareonline.com.
Publication date: