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Western North Carolina gardens are full of quiet little meetings. A bumble bee ducks into scarlet bee balm. A swallowtail drifts over Joe Pye weed. A hover fly, dressed like a tiny bee, hovers over mountain mint. At dusk, moths take over the evening shift, and bats begin sweeping the sky for night-flying insects.
Pollinators are animals that move pollen from flower to flower, helping plants make seeds, fruits, and the next generation of plants. Pollinator Partnership describes birds, bats, bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, and other animals as part of this essential web, and notes that pollinators also support healthy ecosystems, not just food crops. In our home gardens, that means more berries for birds, more seeds for wildflowers, more resilient plant communities, and more life in the landscape.
So, without further ado, meet the pollinators of Western North Carolina!
Bees: The Busy Specialists and Generalists
When most of us picture a pollinator, we picture a bee, but “bee” does not mean just honey bee. North Carolina has about 560 native bee species, and most of them are solitary. About 75% nest in the ground, while about 25% nest in cavities such as hollow stems, old beetle tunnels, or woody plant material.
In WNC gardens, look for fuzzy bumble bees, metallic green sweat bees, tiny mining bees, carpenter bees, mason bees, and leafcutter bees. Some are active in cool early spring weather, just as red maple, serviceberry, and eastern redbud begin blooming. Others appear later, working summer and fall flowers such as wild bergamot, cutleaf coneflower, goldenrods, and asters.
What Are Bees Attracted To?
Bees are attracted to nectar and pollen, and many are drawn to blue, purple, yellow, and white flowers. Bumble bees have a particularly fun trick called buzz pollination: They vibrate their flight muscles to shake pollen loose from certain flowers!
What Do Bees Need?
To thrive, bees need flowers from spring through fall, pesticide-free spaces, bare soil patches for ground nesters, and standing stems for cavity nesters. A tidy garden may look finished to us, but a slightly wilder garden often looks like home to a bee.
Butterflies: The Sunny-Day Ambassadors
Butterflies are the pollinators that tend to win hearts first. In WNC, we may see eastern tiger swallowtails, spicebush swallowtails, monarchs, skippers, sulphurs, fritillaries, and many others floating through sunny borders.
Adult butterflies visit flowers for nectar, but their young need host plants. That’s the piece many gardeners miss. Monarch caterpillars need milkweeds. Zebra swallowtail caterpillars need pawpaw. Spicebush swallowtail caterpillars use spicebush and sassafras. NC State Extension emphasizes that butterfly habitat should support the whole life cycle: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult.
What Are Butterflies Attracted To?
Butterflies are attracted to sunny, sheltered spots and flat-topped or clustered flowers that make easy landing pads. Good garden choices include:
- butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
- swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
- buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis)
- New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)
- purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
What Do Butterflies Need?
They need nectar, host plants, basking places, damp soil for “puddling,” and protection from insecticides. Butterflies remind us that a chewed leaf isn’t always damage. Sometimes it’s a nursery.
Moths: The Night-Shift Pollinators
Moths often do their best work after we’ve gone inside. Some are small and plain, while others are spectacular, like luna moths and sphinx moths in the family Sphingidae. Many moths visit pale or white flowers that open late, release fragrance at night, or hold nectar deep in tubular blooms.
What Are Moths Attracted To?
In a WNC garden, evening-blooming and fragrant plants can support moths. Think common evening primrose, garden phlox, native honeysuckles such as trumpet honeysuckle, and white or pale asters. Moths are also incredibly important as food for birds, bats, spiders, frogs, and other wildlife.
What Do Moths Need?
They need dark nights. Porch lights, landscape uplighting, and bright security lights can disorient moths and other night insects. A simple change, like turning off unnecessary lights or using warm, shielded lighting, can make the evening garden friendlier.
Beetles: The Ancient Flower Visitors
Beetles are among the oldest pollinators, and they’re often overlooked because they don’t always look graceful doing the job. They crawl into flowers, chew, bump around, and leave with pollen stuck to their bodies. Messy? Sometimes. Effective? Absolutely.
Beetle-pollinated flowers are often bowl-shaped, sturdy, and easy to crawl around in. The U.S. Forest Service describes many beetle flowers as white, dull white, or green, strongly fruity, open during the day, and sometimes large and solitary, like magnolias.
What Are Beetles Attracted To?
In WNC landscapes, beetles may visit magnolias, pawpaw, goldenrods, and clusters of small flowers. They’re attracted to spicy, fruity, musky, or fermented scents. Some beetles are pollinators, some are decomposers, and some are predators of garden pests. The more diverse your garden is, the more room there is for these different roles.
What Do Beetles Need?
Beetles need leaf litter, logs, undisturbed soil, and a garden that isn’t stripped bare each fall. Leaving a few natural areas around shrub borders or woodland edges gives beetles places to shelter and complete their life cycles.
Flies: The Bee Look-Alikes with Secret Talents
Flies may not get invited onto many pollinator posters, but they should! Hover flies, also called flower flies or syrphid flies, are common garden visitors. Many look like tiny bees or wasps with yellow-and-black markings, but they cannot sting. A helpful clue: Flies have one pair of wings, while bees and wasps have two.
Adult hover flies visit blooms for nectar and pollen. Their larvae can be equally helpful, since many eat aphids and other soft-bodied pests. The U.S. Forest Service notes that many flies visit flowers, and some are good pollinators even though they aren’t as hairy as bees.
What Are Flies Attracted To?
Flies are often attracted to small, shallow flowers where nectar is easy to reach. Garden favorites include mountain mint, golden alexanders, boneset, asters, and goldenrods. Some fly-pollinated plants, such as pawpaw, use less “garden-pretty” scents, including yeasty or carrion-like odors, to attract their pollinators.
What Do Flies Need?
Flies need nectar, pollen, damp places, leaf litter, and a break from broad-spectrum insecticides. Once you start noticing them, you will see them everywhere.
Birds: Hummingbirds and the Power of Red Flowers
In WNC, the ruby-throated hummingbird is our main bird pollinator. These tiny birds are drawn to tubular flowers, especially red and orange ones, because those shapes and colors often signal nectar.
Favorite native plants include:
- cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
- eastern red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
- trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)
- scarlet bee balm (Monarda didyma)
- fire pink (Silene virginica)
- crossvine (Bignonia capreolata)
NC State Extension recommends planting a variety of native trees, shrubs, vines, and perennials with staggered bloom times, and notes that hummingbirds also need branches for perching and nesting.
What Are Hummingbirds Attracted To?
Here’s a sweet fact: Hummingbirds don’t live on nectar alone. They also eat tiny insects and spiders for protein. The U.S. Forest Service notes that ruby-throated hummingbirds feed on small insects, gnats, aphids, and spiders, especially when preparing for migration.
What Do Hummingbirds Need?
To help them thrive, grow nectar plants, skip red dye in feeders, keep feeders clean, and avoid insect sprays. A healthy hummingbird garden is really a tiny habitat, full of flowers, perches, insects, and shelter.
Bats: Pollinators Globally, Garden Allies Locally
Bats deserve a special note. Around the world, nectar-feeding bats pollinate important plants, including agaves in the Southwest and Mexico.
Here in North Carolina, though, our bats are not nectar-feeding pollinators. NC State Extension’s Plant Toolbox explains that North Carolina bats feed exclusively on insects, so planting “bat-pollinated” plants will not attract pollinating bats here.
What Are Bats Attracted To?
That doesn’t make them any less valuable in a home landscape. North Carolina has 17 bat species, and all are insectivores. They eat moths, beetles, mosquitoes, midges, and other night-flying insects. In that sense, bats are pollinator allies: They help balance nighttime insect populations, and they are part of the same evening ecosystem as moths, beetles, and night-blooming plants.
What Do Bats Need?
Bats need clean water, mature trees, roosting habitat, dark skies, and fewer pesticides. A garden with native plants that supports insects will also support the bats that feed on them.
Know the Pollinators of Western North Carolina So You Can Help Protect Them
The more we understand pollinators, the easier it is to protect them. Bees need nesting sites, not just flowers. Butterflies need host plants, not just nectar. Moths need darkness. Beetles need leaf litter and sturdy blooms. Flies need our respect. Hummingbirds need flowers, insects, and perches. Bats need safe night skies and insect-rich habitat.
We can all do our part by planting native plants, creating continuous bloom, planting in clusters, providing water, leaving some dead wood and bare ground, and reducing or eliminating pesticide impacts. Those are simple ideas, but in a WNC garden, they can turn a yard into a living bridge between the Blue Ridge woods, neighborhood green spaces, and the tiny, wild, important lives moving through them.
