Posted on: Thursday May 18, 2017
![A close up on two insects on a cluster of yellow Goldenrod flowers. One of the insects is eating the other.](https://manitobamuseum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/MM_Botany-ambush_bug_solidago_rigida.gif)
This is a blog about pollination. It’s gonna be great! You’ll love it. I write the best blogs. There’s this one plant—it’s a Goldenrod—it is THE best plant for pollinators. Manitoba has THE best plants for pollinators. Not like Ontario. All the pollinators love Goldenrod: bees, flies, butterflies, moths—even beetles. All the other plants in the prairie—losers. Can’t attract the pollinators! Can’t do it! But that Goldenrod! So many pollinators visit it that there’s this bug—it’s an ambush bug—that it sits on the Goldenrod and eats the pollinators that show up. It eats them! Totally devours them! Nothing left but a pathetic husk. Sad.
Goldenrods are the best. They used to be all over the place. Then immigrants came, cut down all the Goldenrods and started growing plants from Eurasia. Like wheat. Pollinators don’t like wheat! They hate it! There’s no nectar! None! Now the native pollinators, they don’t have anything to eat! Nothing! That’s why we should grow Goldenrods. A lot of them. So many that it will look like a wall. A big, golden wall. It’s gonna be beautiful! The pollinators will love it.
Image: Ambush bug eating a pollinator!
![Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson](https://manitobamuseum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/MM_Diana-Bizecki-Robson-scaled-e1697754857159-1024x1024.jpg)