The Rocky Mountain Bee Plant.
(Polanisia purpurea.)
Mr. Editor:—About the middle of August, by invitation of Mr. Alfred Green, of Amesbury, a friend and myself visited his place to see the bees work on the Rocky Mountain bee plant. We arrived there about eight o’clock in the morning, and found the plants swarming with bees; one, two, and in some cases three bees upon the same flower.
Mr. Green informed us that they were still at work on it, the day before, at seven o’clock in the evening. It was amusing to see them gather pollen from it while on the wing, the stamens extending so far out that they could not reach them after alighting on the flower.
The plant was growing on a rather light soil, not highly manured, and stood from two to three feet high, branching out in all directions. Planted in the spring, it comes into blossom soon after the white clover disappears and continues until killed by the frost. If planted in the fall, as Mr. G. says it can be, it would blossom much earlier. I think this is the best plant to cultivate for bees, as it fills a vacancy, (in this locality) between the white clover and the fall flower.
Alsike clover I have raised, commencing in 1860; and find that, on my soil, bees prefer it to white clover. But as it begins and ends blossoming at the same time with white clover, it is not of so much value for bees, as it would be if it came a month or so later.
As the seed of the Rocky Mountain bee plant is valuable for poultry, and probably for swine and other farm stock, when made into meal, it would perhaps pay to raise it for the seed alone.
Calvin Rogers.
West Newbury, Mass., Sept. 12, 1870.
[For the American Bee Journal.]