Spring Beauty + the Bees That are Waiting

As I write this, there's still snow on the ground, and our perennials are still tucked under straw where they've been all winter. It’s been a long one, and I know I'm not the only one feeling it. But the forecast says the warmth of the sun is on its way, and if you know where to look, the signs are already there. The trees are budding up, robins are singing, and the earliest native bees are stirring. The first thing these bees will need, when they crawl out into the cold bright air, is food.

That's where Claytonia virginica comes in: Spring Beauty, one of the most unassumingly important plants in the early spring landscape, and one you are unlikely to ever find at a regular garden centre. There's a reason for that, and once you think of it, you'll see this little plant entirely differently.

Claytonia virginica blooms early (sometimes shockingly early), pushing up through leaf litter before most of us have even thought about getting into the garden. Its tiny, pink-veined flowers are easy to overlook, but to the first native bees of the season they are a lifeline. Spring Beauty is a specialist plant, meaning certain bees - particularly the aptly named Spring Beauty Mining Bee, Andrena erigeniae, depend on it almost exclusively for pollen. While other early bees will visit for both pollen and nectar, this tiny ground-nesting bee has co-evolved specifically with Claytonia over thousands of years. Without it this specific plant, she cannot raise her young.

So why can't you find it at a garden centre? The answer lies in Spring Beauty's life strategy. Like many other spring ephemerals, Claytonia virginica blooms before trees burst into leaf, sets seed, and then disappears completely; and by early summer there is no trace of it above ground. It will retreat to a small underground corm, waiting out the heat and drought of summer in cool silence. This is a great strategy from the plant's perspective, but it creates a real challenge for nurseries. You can't sell what you can't show. A pot of bare soil doesn't inspire much confidence in the average customer, and growing spring ephemerals to a saleable size takes patience and space that most commercial operations can't justify.

This is something I think about a lot as a plant shoppe with a strong ecological focus. These are exactly the plants our ecosystems need most in early spring, and yet they are the hardest to get into people's gardens simply because our industry is built around commercial viability, not ecological mission or passion for biodiversity. I'm working on changing that, at least in a small way - I've ordered Claytonia seeds and will try to grow them for next season. It's a slow process, but I think it's worth it.

In the meantime, if you want to support early-foraging bees this spring, there are some beautiful companions that bridge the gap. Mertensia virginica (Virginia Bluebells) is a classic that blooms just as Spring Beauty is fading and is irresistible to bumblebee queens and mason bees stocking up for the season ahead. It too will mostly disappear by summer, but its sky-blue flowers are spectacular and that makes up for its ephemeral nature.

One more favourite of mine is Hepatica acutiloba (Sharp-lobed hepatica); another early riser. Delicate, determined and humble, she’s one of the first wildflowers to open and a valuable nectar source for early-foraging bees. Both will be available at the Lavish Gardens Shoppe in the weeks to come. I'll share more as things warm up and the plants slowly come out of hibernation.

For now, I'm watching the forecast and willing the temperature up and the sun out. Spring is coming. The bees know it, even if the arctic wind hasn't gotten the message yet.