The Garden Thyme Podcast

606 June Native Plants and thier Pollintors with Lisa Kuder

• Garden Thyme Podcast • Season 6 • Episode 6

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Hey Listener, 

In this month's episode, we’re talking about native plants and their pollinators with Lisa Kuder, the Native Plants and Landscapes Specialist for the University of Maryland Extension.  We chat about what qualifies a plant as “native”, what a specialist insect is, and why they are essential. 

We also have our : 

  • Native Plant of the Month: Pickerelweed (Pontedaria cordata)
  • Bug of the Month: Crape myrtle bark scale (Acanthococcus lagerstroemiae)
  •  and Monthly Garden Tips. There always something to do in June.


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The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Principal Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture; Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County); and Emily Zobel- Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

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Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript
 S6:E06 Native Plants and Their Pollinators with Lisa Kuder. 

June  2025

Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.  



Emily

Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland extension presents the Garden Time podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Emily.

 


Mikaela

I'm Mikaela.

 


Lisa K

I'm Rachel.

 


Emily

In this month's episode, we're talking all about native plants and their pollinators with Lisa Kuder, Native Plant and Landscape Specialist for University of Maryland extension. June, I think, is an exciting month for the garden. We've gotten our garden planted. The weather hasn't become super hot. There's so much going on. It's National Dairy Month, it's Pride Month, and it holds Pollinator Week, which is one of our favorite weeks of the year because it's the week that we care all about all the amazing things that pollinate all the plants in our environment. We are super excited to have you on the podcast this month, Lisa, to help us learn all about our native plants and their pollinators and the unique relationship between them. So welcome to the podcast.

 


Lisa K

Thank you. I'm super excited to join you guys today.

 


Mikaela

We're happy to have you. Before we start getting into the nitty-gritty of pollinators and native plants and things like that, Lisa, we would love for you to tell us a little bit more about your background and what brought you to this position with the university, because it's still a relatively new position. Is that right?

 


Lisa K

Yeah, it started in September, so it is relatively new still. And so how did I get here? It was not a straight path. I I started off studying chemistry, and I wanted to fight crime, basically, solve mysteries through chemistry. I ended up staying home with my three kids until they were all school-aged. And some Somewhere in between there, I was still interested in solving crime, but I became more interested in the environment. And so when the kids were old enough, I went back to school and got a master's in Environmental Science, and then went on to get another master's in Entomology. And for my thesis at both schools, I focused on wild pollinators, specifically bees and wild flowers. One of the things, as you guys know and your listeners know, if you're interested in pollinators, you're interested in plants. They're definitely inextricably linked. So yeah, my background with plants and flowers really was wildflower meadows. So I joined the Dennis Van Engelstorp Lab at University of Maryland College Park. And there I worked with Maryland Department of Transportation on tweaking their existing vegetation management practices to help encourage regeneration of native wildflowers. And the idea was really to help support pollinating insects.

 


Lisa K

While I was at University of Maryland, another thing came up, tying me to Pollinators and Meadows, which was in the Bee lab, folks were regularly coming to saying, I want to create pollinator habitat, and it's really hard. And I was like, Yeah, we keep hearing this. So I started googling and found, I discovered this company in the UK, Wildflower Turf. They've developed this rapid meadow technology where you can put native wildflowers and grasses into this sod technology. And so I called up the owner and said, Have you thought about coming to the US? And a few months later, he was on a plane and we were doing some trials at UMD's sod facility. We were able to get some grants to do customer discovery. And so that was a really fascinating experience because I had absolutely zero experience working with marketing or industry from that perspective. I was mainly focused on the science. So going out and talking with landscape professionals and figuring out what the market needs are, what the demand is. It was really fascinating. I didn't expect to like that aspect of it, but it was very interesting. So fast forward, in 2023, a legislative bill, House Bill 950, commonly referred to as the Maryland Native Playup Program, was passed with bipartisan support, which was amazing.

 


Lisa K

And that led to the creation of of this role, the Maryland Native Plants Program extension position. And so when I saw the advert for it, I thought, This is my dream job. Because it combines a lot of the things that I find most fascinating, plants, insects, and also the marketing component and working with industry. I really found that I like the human component as well. So it combines all of those things in one.

 


Rachel 

Well, I think that we're really lucky to have you working for the University Maryland extension and your expertise and guiding our Native Plant and Landscape program. It's so exciting to see all the work you've done so far. And then just thinking about what's going to happen in the next five to seven years. It's going to be great.

 


Lisa K

Thanks. I'm super excited about it, too.

 


Emily

I think it's nice to have more resources around native plants just because so many people have so many questions about them and want to make their yards more pollinator friendly. And the easiest way that we say to do that is by planting native plants. So that actually leads us into next question, which is what qualifies a plant as native? And then how do we know if a plant is native to Maryland or just native to the area or region? Can people on the Eastern Shore plant native Delaware plants? Do they acknowledge state lines?

 


Lisa K

That's a great question. And thinking back to when I was first getting into native plants, it was confusing because you would go to a nursery and the signage would not be... It would sometimes be very vague. If it said anything about nativity at all, sometimes it would just say native, but it didn't specify native to North America, native to the Northeast, to Maryland, or to a particular ecosystem. Region. And so that's really one of the reasons the bill was written was to help make it more clear for Marylanders and others, too, is what's native. I mean, I think there are a lot of different ways you could define native, but For the program, we use the language that the bill used to define native, and that is that a native plant occurs naturally in the state and surrounding region, ecosystem, and habitat without direct or indirect human actions. This includes plants that were present before colonial settlement or are listed as native to the state on the Maryland Plant Atlas. That's the exact wording from the bill, so variations of that. But basically, I would say that's the essence, regardless of which government agency you go to for the definition of native, is that usually it's occurring naturally pre-colonial times, and that it involves not just where it's from, but the associations it has with other flora and fauna.

 


Lisa K

The Maryland Plant Atlas, that was new to me, actually. So that's a really good source, and it's the definitive source that we're using to figure out what's native to Maryland. Because even that is confusing when you look online, there are different sources, like USDA Plant Database. Sometimes it says something different than other sources like the Maryland Plant Atlas. So the Maryland Native Plant program is not just extension. We have a couple of different agencies that are part of the program. It's Maryland DNR, we have Maryland Department of Ag, and the Maryland Native Plant Society. And so to figure out what is native, again, we're using multiple sources, but the definitive source is the Maryland Plant Atlas. And that is managed by Maryland DNR in partnership with UMD's Norton Brown Herbarium, as well as the Maryland Biodiversity Project. So it's a really solid authoritative source of what's native to Maryland.

 


Rachel 

So Lisa, you've talked in great detail about the qualities of a native plant, but are there different levels in which we should search for native plants when we're adding them into our landscape?

 


Lisa K

Yeah. So the EPA has different ecoregion levels, and they range from one to four, with one being the most general or broad. And which level you choose really depends on your project, what level of detail you need. So for the commercial list that the Maryland Native Plant program has compiled, we use EPA Ecoregion Level 2. And so that's our three three main ecoregions in Maryland that most folks are familiar with. We've got the mountain region, the Piedmont region, and the coastal plains.

 


Mikaela

Awesome.

 


Rachel 

I think that's really important for Marylanders to know as well, because we have a varying range of ecosystems in Maryland. So we shouldn't be planting something on the Eastern shore that has an ecoregion of the peed plant, right?

 


Lisa K

Yeah, absolutely right.

 


Mikaela

I'm glad you said that, Rachel, because it's true. We can say a plant is native to Maryland, but that doesn't necessarily help us know where to plant it because we have the sea to the mountains. So it could be a very different habitat.

 


Rachel 

Yeah. I'm not going to plant mountain laurel.

 


Emily

We got a lot of diversity for our little state here.

 


Rachel 

Yes, we do have a lot of diversity, and we have to be aware of that.

 


Emily

You can only imagine how tricky some of the larger states... It must be... A native plant in Texas must be mind boggling, or California. Oh, yeah.

 


Mikaela

Actually, you'd be surprised. I looked it up because in one of my home states, Wisconsin, it also only has three ecoregions, and so does Minnesota. It's got the same amount of ecore... So in theory, the diversity is somewhat similar. It's Just that we have a lot more compressed and older soils here, I think, or older habitats, and they were affected more by glacial activity. So it's not that different.

 


Rachel 

You learn something new every day.

 


Lisa K

And Emily, you had asked a good question about state lines. And yeah, of course, plants don't recognize those state lines at all, do they? And so, yeah, we have a lot of overlap with neighboring states. So for instance, right now We're working on a regional guide for the Piedmont region, which is Ecoreegen 64, and it extends well into Pennsylvania and into Virginia and on up through the Mid-Atlantic. I'd to double check on the other states. It's six states. I knew it's six states.

 


Mikaela

All right. So we know you are a specialist, but the question is, how do we define specialists as it relates to insects and plants?

 


Lisa K

So when I think of specialists, insects, I think of basically like picky eaters. So I think one of the easiest ways to think about it is to compare and contrast a generalist versus a specialist. A generalist is an insect that can eat a lot of different plants, like pollen and nectar from a lot of plants, such as a honey bee. We say honey bees go to many different flower types. But there are others that are much pickier and that can only use certain flowers or leaves. Those are our specialist insects. And so they basically have a really narrow diet. It's really fascinating to think about why that is, because when we just look at plants as humans, they just leaves all look similar, right? You wouldn't think that there's that much variation. Yes, we see different sizes, and the shape might vary, but we don't often think necessarily about the chemistry of those leaves or the other plant parts, like the pollen or the nectar. But it turns out the chemistry of the leaves and the other plant parts varies drastically. And when we think about plants, not only are they trying to attract pollinators, say, but they're trying to deter herbivores.

 


Lisa K

So they have a whole cocktail of chemistries to do multiple things. And so some of our insects, they've co-evolved. They have these really long-standing relationships with plants where they've been able to, over many hundreds, if not thousands of years, been able to adapt to whatever toxins and nutritional profiles a particular plant has. One of the most common examples is probably the monarch butterfly and common milkweed. If you break off one of the leaves, it's got that milky, sappy stuff that comes out, and it is toxic. But monarchs have their... Caterpillars have learned to adapt to those chemicals. And so they could utilize it. In fact, that is, as many people know, their host plant.

 


Mikaela

Okay, quick fun fact for you guys, just because I had to look it up this morning. Randomly, I looked up- Oh, love a fun fact. I randomly looked up the pollination process for milkweed. And I had no idea that it's actually super complex, and that pollination of milkweed is usually by accident. It's very different than the exchange of pollen on other plants. They have these little pockets on the flower, and all they have is a little crack or a little slit in the middle. And the insects basically have to accidentally get their foot stuck in the slit. And then they have to try and pull their leg out with the pollen on it. It's like gelatinous pollen instead of dry pollen. And then they have to go to a different flour and do that same process in order for the pollen to actually get into this little crack or slit in the flour. I cannot believe we have any milkweed Because the process sounds really complex, and it has to all be by accident. It just has to attract so many insects that one of them accidentally puts their foot in this little cracker hole.

 


Emily

Isn't that wild? So what I'm hearing is that milkweed gets pollinated through a three stooges gag.

 


Mikaela

And this is if the insect can get their leg out of the crack, by the way. There's evidence that some get stuck and that they can't pull their leg out, and that they lose their leg. My gosh. It's brutal, man.

 


Emily

Oh my God. I'm going to look at milkweed very differently now.

 


Mikaela

Right? Because I was like, I don't know how I even got on the topic, but I had no idea. It's about as complex as orchids because I know orchids have a complex breeding process as well. So it's amazing we have any milkweed.

 


Emily

Especially with those monarch caterpillars chewing it up, man. Last year, they ate mine down to sticks. It came back, but they eat it down to some sticks last year. They were hungry little caterpillars.

 


Mikaela

All right. I'm sorry. We'll get back on topic. I just had to share that.

 


Lisa K

Oh, that was definitely on topic. That was awesome.

 


Mikaela

Really interesting. Anyways, so as a a follow-up, can you explain to us what a host plant is?

 


Lisa K

Yeah. So a host plant is... You've got a plant that is going to be used by... The leaves are going to be used by an insect for food. And so for For those plants, we have, especially for caterpillars, again, with that chemistry, those caterpillars have adapted or co-evolved with that plant so that it can use that food regardless of whatever the chemistry is, or I should actually, I guess, because of that chemistry. And so it's really fascinating because some insects, they can use maybe just a couple of groups or genera of plants and trees, but there are a few that can use only one. And so some are super hyper-specific or picky eaters. Some trees and shrubs that the Talame often refers to are known as Keystone species, and those are the ones that really do play an outsized role in supporting food webs, especially caterpillars. We often think about, when we think about butterflies and moths and skippers, we think about the very elegant adults that we see flipping in our landscape and sipping nectar from flowers. And we tend not to think so much about that other stage, the larval or caterpillar stage.

 


Lisa K

But that's where really the host plants come in in helping butterflies really complete their life cycle. And so they have adapted to or co-evolved to be able to utilize certain leaf chemistries. And those Keystone species, like oak species, quercus, we also have willows, the salic species. We've got black cherries, prunus species. They support hundreds of different lepidoptra, which are, again, the butterflies, the skippers, the moths of species. And so they really do play an outsized role. And there was a really interesting study that came out not long ago that shows that the 90 % of Lepidopteros species use only 14 % of the plant genre throughout the US. That's fascinating. And so, again, a leaf is not a leaf. They're apparently not created equal as far as caterpillars go.

 


Mikaela

And I know we're talking about caterpillars, but I don't know why this number stands out in my mind. When we talk about native bees, in Maryland, 27 % of our native bee species are specialists. In fact, we're one of the top five states for pollen specialist bees, at least on the Eastern part of the United States. So we have a significant number.

 


Lisa K

Yeah, that's true. And I think that's a really good point And so there's a great article by Jared Fowler, and I believe Sam Jogui is on that paper as well, that identifies some of our specialist bees and their connections to certain genera of plants or or sometimes just a single species of plant. And so the idea is if we really plant or focus on those specialist bees, then we can feed all the bees. And so I love that concept of thinking about those, we'll say those pickier eaters, because if we feed them, the generals, again, they're going to eat everything. They're not super selective about their food. And it's interesting to think about, too, is when we think specialist bee, it's It's really just the offspring that has to eat a specific type of pollen. The adult can visit many different flower types. But yeah, so we can do a lot to really help bee pollinators by selecting those special bees. And that Jared Fowler paper, he has a web page as well, which is really great. So if you're wanting to support pollinators, you can check out that list.

 


Mikaela

What's fascinating is there are still so many species that don't even a name yet. Common Bee is what it's named. It just doesn't have a title yet.

 


Rachel 

Yeah, or ones that we haven't even found yet because of the limited research that's being done on native bees and native plant population.

 


Lisa K

Yeah, there's really a lot we don't know about our native pollinators. In the last decade, a lot more research has been done, but there's still so much we don't know, especially about our ground nesting bees. We don't know a lot about their preferences and even their floral preferences. So, yeah, we still need a lot of research on these topics.

 


Mikaela

All right. So now that we've set the stage, can you please share some of your favorite specialist relationships between native plants and their insects?

 


Rachel 

So one of my favorite is... It's an Andrina bee, and it's just really tiny In fact, most people probably wouldn't recognize it as a bee just because it's a little black insect. I'm really terrible at pronouncing Latin names, but it's the Andrina aerugine. It's commonly referred to as the Spring Beauty Minor Bee. And as its name suggests, its specialist flower is spring beauty, Chleetonia virginica. And that's one of our spring ephemeral. And one of the reasons this one is one of my favorites is because the pollen on Spring Beauty is pink. And so when you watch these bees collect pollen, you see on the back of their legs, it gets covered with pink puff balls. And it's so adorable and beautiful. And that's an example, like we were talking about earlier, of a bee that can be hyper-specialist.

 


Mikaela

And it's a very short window of time, like when you think about it, because it's a spring ephemeral. So it's pretty short. That's amazing.

 


Lisa K

Yeah, that is amazing. And I feel like spring ephemeral don't grow everywhere either. They're only in select environments. So we have to protect those environments when we find them.

 


Mikaela

Really good point. Okay, so, and this is the really big question, Lisa, is why is this all so important? Why do we Why do we care? Why do we want other people to care?

 


Rachel 

I think that's crux of it, right? Because to get people to care, somehow it has to resonate with us. So there's a quote by, and you've probably heard before, by E. O. Wilson, the little things run the world. And that is so true, right? When you think about, if you remember back to a middle school and high school biology class when we're learning about food webs, there are the plants and then the insects are also way down at the bottom of that food web. And so when you think about insects, they just play so many key functions, whether it's as food for other things up the food chain or as decomposers, detrovores. They really do. They run the planet. And so they're just an essential part of our healthy food webs. And again, going back to Doug Talamey, I think as As far as getting people to care, I think it's sometimes a hard sell to get people to care about bugs because many of us have grown up thinking, Oh, I don't like bugs. Even if you're a gardener and you're working on your rosebush or your creep myrtle or hopefully some native plants in there and you see something eating your plants, that's also discouraging.

 


Rachel 

And so we've all thought, at At least I know I was raised that way, that, Oh, bugs aren't really... I didn't think of them as necessarily a good thing. But the insects are, even though the caterpillars, for instance, that are eating our leaves, they're Absolutely essential. And that's where Doug Talamey's work, I think, has done such a good job is showing, again, showing that really strong link between plants, insects, and birds. Because birds is something that people do love to invite into their yards. We all love to have chiquities and Wrens and Cardinals. And when you think about what do birds need? They need insects. What do insects need? They need plants. So we need to have all three of those things in our yards and our landscapes to really enjoy those beautiful birds. And we need a lot of insects, a lot of bugs, if we want to have birds. And Doug Talamey's work showing how Just how many? He's quantified how many caterpillars, roughly. Just a single family of chiquities needs. And I think it was 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars for just a single family of little chiquities. So that's a lot of bugs needed.

 


Rachel 

And so if you think about throughout the landscape, all the different birds we have, that's many, many, many, many insects. And so I think when we think When you think about it from that perspective, that gets people hooked, gets people hooked on planting for wildlife and thinking about the nutritional needs of all those organisms that we care about. And really, there's so much that we need to do because we see in the paper, we are having a biodiversity crisis. We're losing a lot of our insects, a lot of our plants, and a lot of our terrestrial birds. And so, yeah, we We definitely need to, I think, get the word out there more to get people to care, because you're right. If people don't care, we're not going to be moved to act.

 


Mikaela

Now, that's a very powerful point. I know I've said this a lot, so I'm sorry for repeating myself, but I think it's also empowering to people and homeowners to be able to do something just right in their backyards, front yards, to be able to contribute something back, even if it feels small. Insects are small. So building a little world for them is not outside the realm of possibilities for your property. So that's a positive note, is that we can all contribute and make a positive change.

 


Rachel 

I love that thought, Mikaela. And you're absolutely right. Insects are small, and they don't need a lot of space necessarily to fill those functions, those necessary functions. And even with oak trees, many of us have a smaller yard. They think, Oh, I can't plant an oak. My yard's not big enough. But some of our oak species, we have over 19 for just the Piedmont region alone, although your audience is well beyond the Piedmont. So regardless of where we live in the mid-Atlantic, there are many oak species, and we have some that are small, too. We have the dwarf chinkapin oak in the mid-Atlantic. We also have the bear oak that are under 25 feet. We have options. They're really more shrub-like. So even if you do have a smaller property, you, too, can probably plant an oak. But yeah, even if we can't plant a tree, whatever we can plant, even container gardening can make a difference. But yeah, I feel like balconies, they can play a role too, for sure. For a while, the only place we had sun in our yard was on the deck in the back. And so I got some whiskey barrels.

 


Rachel 

And I have to say, they were real whiskey barrels because I think I almost got drunk driving home. It was so fragrant.

 


Mikaela

Oh, my God. That's amazing.

 


Rachel 

But anyway, they're probably like, you've seen the whiskey barrels, they're like two feet deep, maybe. And wild flowers did beautifully in there. Yeah, yeah. So if you can find containers that are 18 inches to 24 inches, you can plant some good stuff in there. And even sedges. Sedges are host plants for a lot of caterpillars, and those are, what, 18, 24 inches max? So there are lots of options for any size yard or space.

 


Rachel 

Do you want to know something interesting I learned about on Ireland?

 


Lisa K

Yeah.

 


Mikaela

Yes.

 


Rachel 

Okay. So Jamieson whiskey barrels are made out of American oak trees.

 


Mikaela

It all comes back to the oak.

 


Lisa K

Yes, it does.

 


Rachel 

Yes. So they are used as bourbon barrels first, and then they're sent to Jamieson for them to use for three to five years, that's about how long they use them, as whiskey barrels. And then we get them back to plant stuff.

 


Lisa K

Yeah. Isn't that cool? That's awesome, right?

 


Mikaela

There's something special about oaks, I'm telling you what. It's not just for the catapult. Yeah. So what can people and communities do to support their specialist pollinators? And we did give a few examples, but feel free to repeat all of us.

 


Lisa K

Okay. One of the best things we can do is prioritize native plants, especially those Keystone species in the landscape. I think the beautiful thing is, most of us aren't starting from scratch. We already have some things in our yard. It's okay. The native plants, you can add them in with your your monumental plants. You can start small. It's just getting some native plants in there and again, focusing on those Keystone species. Also, When we think about trees, we often have just grass underneath. It feels like when you drive through a neighborhood, we have the Overstory, a couple of big trees, and then we tend to have grass underneath, maybe a shrub or two here and there. But we're missing all the layers there. And so I would suggest that's another important thing that we can do so that pollinators, especially our butterflies, can complete their life cycle. And so that idea of planting things under our trees instead of having grass. Because a lot of those caterpillars, they are going to overwinter underneath the trees. And so they need to have leaves and shrubs and some other vegetation layers underneath that. And then also planting, abundance and diversity of plants and prioritizing the plant groups that are known to support specialist bees.

 


Lisa K

And again, that That Jared Fowler article, or the website, hopefully we can share that with the listeners. But those are great species to focus on for feeding our pollinators. And then I would say lastly is to minimize toxic chemicals. So whether that's we're doing it or hiring someone in to spray for mosquitoes or some other pests is just being really mindful of non-target effects because the bees are out there and whatever we're spraying, it affect not only our bees, but also caterpillars. And again, as we talked about earlier, that's going to affect the birds and everything else up the food chain.

 


Mikaela

Great. And any other information and resources that you wanted to include, we will include those in the show notes as well, including Jared Fowler's study and page.

 


Lisa K

Okay, awesome. Yeah, I think there are a couple sites. So University of Maryland extension, we have the new Maryland Native Plant Program web page. I'll say it's under construction. It's a work in progress, but it's already up. So there you'll find the Maryland Commercial Plant List, as well as some other great resources. There's also Xerces, spelled X-E-R-C-E-S, Society for Invertebrate Conservation. So xerces. Org is a great site for anything related to pollinators, whether it's you want to create a meadow or you want to find plants for whichever region you're in. Great source. And then lastly, we talked a lot about Doug Tallamy's work. If you haven't read one of his books, I'd highly recommend it just because, again, he just does such a great job making people care.

 


Emily

Well, thank you again, Lisa, so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing your wealth of knowledge and resources with our listeners.

 


Lisa K

Yeah, it was a pleasure.

 


: Native plant on the Month with Mikaela:


Mikaela

Well, so I had to do some thinking about this because I wanted to make sure that it correlated with our discussion with Lisa about native plants and their specialists. So I've got a really fun one, though. I got excited as I started writing it, as I want to do when we talk about native plants. So Native Plant of the Month is Picrylweed, which is Pontedaria cordata. So this is a really fun pick for June. I really have neglected are herbaceous emergence, which means essentially this is a group of plants that require either completely saturated soils or to actually be underwater. So it means that these plants are found growing along shallow shorelines and in pond or Lake edges. So it's preferences for fresh water, but there is a very slight tolerance for brackish water, depending on the environment and how much salt is actually in the water. So this plant reaches only about 4 feet tall, but that includes the amount of plant material that is growing under the water. So it can tolerate a depth of up to 12 to 18 inches of water, preferably in rich loomy soils. So this is obviously soil that is way below the water, and it needs to have full sun.

 


Mikaela

So it forms these really broad leaves that are glossy, and they almost look like water lily-ish, except that they point upwards. They don't lay flat on the surface of the water. And just like the species name implies, it has a cordate-shaped leaf, so it means it's like a heart-shaped. So very attractive foliage, but it forms these tall spikes of purple to blue flowers Which are really attractive.

 


Emily

They are so pretty.

 


Mikaela

Very pretty, especially for a wetland plant. You don't expect to find something of that color.

 


Emily

Can I just rip up my whole turf grass and put in a pond so I can have just these? I just want a pond of bees.

 


Mikaela

I know. This would make an excellent plant for a home or small pond in someone's backyard. It's also super attractive to lots of pollinators, in particular the group of long-tongued bees, because the flowers themselves are a little bit tubular. They're small, so you can't see it, but they are tubular, so they have to reach way down into the flowers to retrieve pollen and nectar. It is quite common, this plant, throughout Maryland, freshwater systems, but more specifically in the Piedmont coastal plain. You won't see this as much in the mountainous regions, just because I think it ends up being too cold and they don't have as much standing water up there. And like I said, it's an excellent choice for small decorative ponds. Fish ponds, whatever, actually, fish will use the stems of these plants as habitat, so they'll actually hide in the plants themselves if it's in standing water. And in terms of supporting wildlife beyond fish, the seeds are eaten by ducks, and many dragonflies and damselflies lay eggs on the stems, which is yay for mosquito control. That's what you want, right? So if you want some natural mosquito control, plant a little bit of pickerol weed.

 


Mikaela

The biggest challenge is planting it and finding a location where the water depths are greater than soil saturation. So that means at soil surface where it stay wet all the time, but shallower than where the leaves are growing. So in that 6 to 12-inch flooding depth is what it prefers. And it needs that depth year round. It needs to be a perennial system where you're going to have water all the time. It doesn't dry up in the summer. It does not tolerate being dried out, which makes sense. It's a wetland plant. And to bring this all home, there are actually three species of bees that only feed their young pollen from this plant. This species, this plant. There's one longhorn bee. There's another one whose scientific name. Actually, two of them whose scientific name I can't even pronounce. And they're so rare and haven't been recorded in our region in a very long time. But suffice it to say there's three species, and they're all considered rare. So it makes an excellent example of a native plant that supports specialist pollinators, specialist bees in this particular instance. And that's my native plant of the month.

 


Mikaela

It's got a lot going on, man.

 


Rachel

Well, now I want to get this. I know.

 


Mikaela

I want a pond.

 


Rachel

Why is it every single time? Every single native plant of the month- And I'm sitting here thinking like, how big of a barrel do I need to have 6 to 12 inches of water to put this, just this plant in?

 


Mikaela

You could. Yeah. You could do a shallow trough if it's like, 12 inches.

 


Rachel

I want to create a frog pond in our backyard.

 


Mikaela

Yeah, you do.

 


Rachel

I do really, really.

 


Emily

I mean, your kids would love that, Rachel.

 


Rachel

So I could plant this in there.

 


Mikaela

Yeah, I think it would tolerate it. Obviously, it doesn't need good drainage. It's fine.

 


Rachel

We do have a store water retention pond.

 


Mikaela

There you go. As long as it doesn't have too much salinity in it, I think you could get away with doing it. I don't have salinity at all.

 


:Bug of the Month with Emily:


Emily

Our Bug of the Month this month. This one was actually inspired by an email that we got from Tim from Anna Randall County. He sent a picture of this on his Crete Myrtle trees and ask some questions about how to control it. So that inspired me to make it our Bug of the Month this month. So crepe myrtle bark scale is a non-native type of soft-scaled insect. And for those of you who have been past listeners, you can remember that scale insects are a tribe of true bug, meaning that they have a piercing, sucking mouth part, and they consume the sap or plant cells. They, however, have a very unique life cycle, where early on in their nymphal stage, they are known as crawers, and they move around, and then they became stationary through their later nymph stage into their adult stage. For females, at least, are non-mobile, but the males will be mobile. The males will emerge out and will have wings and find their... So they have this period of their life where they are non-mobile, basically, which is unique to these guys. They're going to look like small little round bumps on your plants.

 


Emily

Soft scales, specifically, are known for covering themselves in a flexible layer of wax that helps protect them from dehydration and from paracetism and from predators in general. So Crate Myrtle Bark Scales are a pest on Crete Myrtles and occasionally on Beautyberries, they were first found here in Maryland in 2020. They are native to Southeast Asia, and they were first reported in Texas in 2004. You'll see them as you're approaching your Crete Myrtle. Because of their size, they're very visible. And that white up against the brown of your tree bark, and then especially if you have them and you get that sooty mold, so then your tree bark becomes black, and then you see the little white dots on it, it's very recognizable. If they're higher up in trees, you're going to notice that you get early season leaf drop, poor growth, and poor flowering, I think is the bigger cue that you may potentially have these. So if you have crepe myrtles that have flowered really nice over the past few years, and the flowering this year just doesn't seem particularly great, you may want to check them for this insect. So the mature adult females are round it, and they tend to be about a fourth of an inch to six millimeters in diameter.

 


Emily

So again, this is a pretty good size scale. And they tend to be white to grayish. The Crawler stages, so again, that nymphal stage that's able to move, is going to start off as a pale pinky saminy color, and then it's going to turn to a darker gray-brown color before it and it mults into this stationary stage. This scale insect is found along the twigs and small branches. They are very rarely seen on the leaves, and oftentimes, they are a sap breeder, so they will produce honey due, which in return will cause suny mold. You might see other insects such as bees, wasps, hornets, ants, and flies coming and circling around. You create myrtle plants to feed on this honeydew that these insects are creating. They are not the only pest on great myrtles, however, that will produce honeydew. Crete myrtle aphids are another common past that will also produce honeydew. If you are noticing the honeydew around your crepe myrtles, it's worth taking some time to investigate to see if it's aphids, which will feed typically on the leaves or if it's on these scales. This is still a relatively new pest up in our area, so there are a lot of studies still taking place, but it's believed here in Maryland it'll have anywhere from about 2-4 generations per year, possibly overlapping generations, meaning that you would have multiple different life stages taking place at the same time.

 


Emily

Tend to see the first generation of crawlers coming out. Normally, sometime in May. If you follow our Integrated Pest Management newsletter, you should monitor crép myrtle trees throughout the entire growing season as well. If you do find these on your crép myrtles, there are a few different things that you can do to control them. So they do tend to wipe off or get scrubbed off fairly easily. So for light infestations, often start in the bark furrows and the branch forks. So a lot of times if you find them on just, say, a handful of the tips of your branches something, you can easily prune those out. It is worth noting to be careful because improper and overpruning of Crait myrtles can provide more habitats for these scales to colonize and potentially overwinter in. Likewise, overfertilization with that excess nitrogen bloom can lead to a boost in the scale populations as well. We want to make sure that we get a soil test done and then we don't overfertilize when we don't need to. A 2024 University Maryland extension study found many of the populations of crepe myrtle bark scales collapsed or were seriously reduced in the presence of ladybird beta larve.

 


Emily

So these guys do like to feed on that Crawler stage. So supporting natural predators in your landscape can be very beneficial to help control these as well. A heavy stream of water would be useful for knocking crawers off, but will not take off the adults on their own. So you do need to sit there and scrub them gently off. If pesticides are warrant, The most effective approach is to do a combination of dormant oil applications along with a synthetic growth regulator insecticide. For larger, more serious outbreaks, we recommend that you contact a certified arborist or a professional pesticide applicator in order to do these treatments for you. Ideally, you would want to do these treatments after your great myrtle has bloomed in order to prevent any harm to pollinators that might be visiting it. And that is my Book of the Month.

 


Mikaela

Thank you, Em.

 


Emily

Yes, you're welcome. Okay.

 


Mikaela

I did not know this until an entomologist for Bartlettree pointed this out. There's a predatory lady bug larva that looks very similar to them and are often mistaken for them, but they're much more mobile and they're larger. And so it can be confusing to some people. So be careful before you treat because you may actually have some of those natural predators, those natural lady bug larva present. And they're finding now that it's becoming more established that they're doing a pretty good job of helping to control the population of bark scale.


: Get Your Garden Tips here with Rachel:  


Rachel

Well, I really think that June is the perfect time for you to walk around your garden and think about plant problems and look at healthy gardening practices and to really hone in on your garden CSI and IPM practices. And IPM stands for Integrated Pest Management. And CSI is just like the show that we used to watch.

 


Emily

It's a garden scene investigation.

 


Rachel

Get to know your good bugs and your bad bugs. There's some really great resources and guides to help you along your way. One of my favorite YouTube videos is with our esteemed Dr. Mike Raupe, and he does a video on how to identify insect pests in your garden. And we can link that video in our show notes. But he does a really great job of helping us identify our insect pests and then what the good guys could be. Like Mikaela said, there are some natural predators out there that could look very similar to pest species as well. That's where getting to know your good bugs come into play. So tips for June. Get to know your good bugs and your bad bugs. Turn over those leaves. See what's going on behind them. Know that a powerful spray of water may just as beneficial, or if not more beneficial, than putting down a pesticide. If you are like me and you love bearded irises or even Siberian irises, they've since bloomed and it is the perfect time to cut those stalks down. Dig up those iris rhizoms, break them apart if they become overgrown, divide them, share them with your friends if they're nice and healthy.

 


Rachel

If you notice that you have iris bore, you don't want to share those. If you have iris rust, and that's a little red spots on the leaves, don't share those. We don't want to spread disease and bores to our friend's landscapes as well. Don't spray your trees or your shrubs preventatively. Check for our natural predators and paracetoids, because they will benefit your landscape much more than preventatively spraying. So keep an eye out for those good bugs. Water newly planted trees and shrubs until they become established. So this is for about two years, especially during our summer. And if it gets hot and dry, going into next month into the fall. Water deeply and allow the water to soak in directly underneath and around the root ball. Check the depth of water penetration into the soil by digging a small hole after watering. It should be moist about 6 inches down. And a 2-3 inch layer of mulch is really helpful. But as we've talked about before, we're not putting mulch up to the bark of the tree. You're keeping it away from the bark of the tree. And it's going to be a flat donut, not a volcano.

 


Rachel

If you love tomato plants like we love tomato plants, you're going to be monitoring those plants for various symptoms of leaf spot diseases like septoria and early blight. If you notice that you have one of those, sometimes they like to go together, you're going to remove the badly infected lower leaves and keep a thick organic mulch around the plants. Also avoid overwatering because this can exacerbate those diseases. If it gets hot this month, you may notice June drop, and that is especially true for peaches. This is a natural thinning phenomenon, and it is more pronounced when our weather isn't ideal or when you have not hand-thinned. Hand-thinning of the fruits, like for peach, plum, apple, and pear, is vital to having a tree that produces big healthy fruit. It's like going in when you're thinning your radishes. You have to pick out some for those fruits to develop into bigger fruits. You might also notice some disease and insect problems or environmental stress with our fruit trees, and even lack of pollination or fertilization can cause fruit drop. So there's a lot of different things that can cause June fruit drop. And If you have any questions about that stuff, you can always email us on our email, and then we can answer your questions that way, too.

 


Rachel

Flea beetles are really serious right now, and especially if you have an eggplant, They're going to be out there. They love your eggplant. And they'll also get on potato or tomato if you have them in your garden next to them as well. You can use a floating row cover as an effective means of management, but you need to remove those if your plants are flowering, and they should be flowering right now unless you've got little baby eggplants in. You can also spray them with surround. Surround is kale and clay, and this creates a white film over the leaves, and flea beetles don't really like it. Neither do our stink bugs because it's sticky, and they don't want their feet to be sticky. They just don't want to step in it. You can always plant a second crop of beans right now. You can also do another crop of beets and kale. If you're getting into June 20th, near our summer solstice, anything you plant after June 20th is going to be considered a fall crop. So that's your cut off deadline. Summer crops before June 20th. After June 20th, it's going to be a fall crop.

 


Rachel

So squash bugs are going to happen no matter what you do. So are squash fine boreers. There is the caveat, though. Hey, if you plant them a little bit later in June, you might not have squash fine bore. But I am a firm believer on the mid-Atlantic, especially on the Eastern shore. We're seeing two generations of squash fine bore now.

 


Mikaela

Yeah.

 


Rachel

Now, is that scientifically proven? Not yet.

 


Emily

Tom Cuhar from Virginia Tech has basically said, The best Another thing to do for squash vine bore is to go out and just check your plants every day. Squash vine bore has a very distinct red egg that's going to be down on the base of your stock. So take the time to look for it. And you can use that exact same duct tape trick that we use to get the eggs of squash bugs off can be used to take the eggs off of the stem as well. So just spend some time checking those plants if you really want to keep them alive. Or just be prepared to plant a second planting of squash and zucchini and like July.

 


Rachel

And that's another caveat for getting to know your bad bugs, because your squash fine borer is actually a day flying moth, and it's very, very beautiful. A lot of our local food banks will accept produce that we've grown and we have access from for food bank recipients. So if you have extra produce in your garden, or you think you're going to have extra produce in your garden, reach out to your local food bank, see when they will take donations. When we talk about donations, it's things that you are willing to eat and that you would give to your neighbor, not things that are seconds, that are giant zucchini or squash, and share your goods.

 


Emily

Those were some good tips, Rachael.

 


Mikaela

Rachael always reminds me of the things I have not done, and she is a good A reminder that I need to stop being so lazy, and these things are time sensitive.

 


Rachel

You know, Emily hit the nail on the head when she said May was super, super busy. I planted my tomato plants in a flower garden this year because even though I said in February I was going to put in new raised beds, I still haven't done that. I have them built. I just don't have them in the garden and full of soil. So they're going to turn into fall raised beds.

 


Mikaela
 Well, I feel like you have a good excuse. You were at least traveling. I just got distracted by life.



Emily 


Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoy it, and we'll turn in next month for more gardening tips. If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at umegardenpodcast@gmail. Com, or look us up on Facebook at Garden Time Podcast. That's Garden, T-H-Y-M-E. For more information about the University of Maryland extension and these topics, please check us out on the UME, Home and Garden Information Center website at G O U M D dot E D U back slash H G I C. Thanks for listening, and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.


Rachel 


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