Re: birds in the garden (and fennel)

Hi John, 

In writing about the fennel, you could have added that it is a host plant
for the beautiful Anise Swallowtail Butterfly which many people refer to as
a Tiger Swallowtail.  I never get any butterflies as the mockingbirds eat
the caterpillars!  If you grow it as a garden plant and cut off the flowers
as they fade, of course you will never be troubled by seedlings.

Cathy Ratner

> From: John MacGregor <jonivy@earthlink.net>
> Reply-To: jonivy@earthlink.net
> Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 12:47:56 -0700
> To: <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
> Subject: Re: birds in the garden (and fennel)
> 
> on 6/23/03 10:15 AM, Sean A. O'Hara at sean@support.net wrote:
> 
>> In our former garden,. we kept a rather troublesome honeysuckle bush/vine
>> around because it was so attractive to aphids, which in turn were very
>> attractive to bands of Bushtits that would visit to strip the honeysuckle
>> of this apparently tasty little morsels!  We enjoyed seeing these little
>> guys tumbling about in the branches of the vine, searching our each
>> individual aphid, all the while making their little peeping noises.  It was
>> a delight we looked forward to each season, and certainly worth the trouble
>> of keeping this (often unsightly) honeysuckle in the garden.
> 
> Sean, Joe, all,
> 
> The two very large plants  of Lonicera X heckrottii 'Gold Flame' perform
> this same function in the Hall garden, although some other kinds of
> honeysuckle I have tried have succumbed to martyrdom from aphids--despite
> the bushtits.  Another kind of plant I maintain for our several-times-a-day
> insect cleanup crew is large, strategically-placed clumps of bronze
> fennel--Foeniculum vulgare 'Purpurascens' (the plain green form works just
> as well).
> 
>> From the time fennel starts to form flower buds, its sugar production
> increases.  This produces copious numbers of gourmet aphids that taste like
> anise-flavored honey. (Try them!  You'll like them!)  In addition to Bush
> Tits, they also attract several kinds of predatory insects--especially
> ladybugs, syrphid flies, and lacewings, that lay eggs on the fennel and
> whose larvae harvest the aphid feast.  Within a few weeks one can find
> adults, egg cases, larvae (aphid-lions that look like orange and black
> alligators), and pupae  of the ladybugs.  Unroll a leaf petiole, and you are
> liable to find something that looks like a small green slug--the syrphid fly
> larva, which emerges to gorge on aphids.  And lacewing larvae (like green or
> brown alligators with a pair of pincers on the front) hatch from a tiny
> green or white egg on the end of a slender filament and scurry up and down
> the plants, using their hollow pincers to siphon the sugary juices out of a
> hundred aphids each day.  Add to this that many kinds of tiny parasitic
> wasps eat the pollen of the open blossoms, and fennel is a veritable factory
> predatory insects, from which these proliferating creatures disperse onto
> plants throughout the garden.
> 
> I know that native plant enthusiasts decry fennel as a plant that, under
> mediterranean climate conditions, proliferates and crowds out native
> species.  But it has been established in California since the eighteenth
> century (it is reported that it was among the seeds Father Serra brought
> along in his first trip to this land).  One should be careful not to plant
> it near natural areas where it is not already growing.  But in urban gardens
> where the excess seedlings can be weeded out, it is one of the best defenses
> against having to employ poisonous sprays to control aphids and other
> sucking insects.  Besides, it provides endless entertainment for bird
> watchers who love the antics of bushtits and for people who enjoy observing
> the creatures and natural processes of a balanced garden environment.
> 
> John MacGregor
> South Pasadena, CA 91030
> USDA zone 9   Sunset zones 21/23
>
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