Tiny Pollinators

In two of the front beds, I have let the biennial flat leaf Italian parsley bolt in order to allow it to “own” these sections by naturally reseeding.

From a distance, the flowers are rather boring and appear to remain green (ie never fully developing blooms.

Yesterday I inspected these a little closer and noticed a lot of activity on practically every other flower. The largest insects I spotted was perhaps 1/2″ long, tiny wasps busily collecting pollen from the tiny individual flowers.

I managed to capture a few acceptable close ups of these even though the flowers were swaying in and out of focus in the breeze. For each picture I have included a wider angle shot as well as a click-able thumbnail to a closer view of the same scene.

By all means please click to look at the closeups; pollen looks pretty tasty on a grain by grain basis- sort of like a micro version of sugar on top of sweet lemon square deserts.

The largest of the group, the tiny 1/2″ wasp…..

Click for close up:

Top view:

Click for close up:

And the smallest…..

In the picture above you might have noticed the tiny insect in the upper left corner- a flea beetle looking fellow. Or you might not have, they are perhaps 3/16- 1/8″ long:

Still no? try this:

And the in between……

There were hundreds of these little guys on each plant but they were so harried in their pollen collection that it was difficult to catch one in focus. These are about 1/4 inch long.

Click for close up: