Don't Plant Those Bee-Friendly Wildflowers Cheerios Is Giving Away

[Eugene]

Source: Lifehacker

Don’t Plant Those “Bee-Friendly” Wildflowers Cheerios Is Giving Away

Beth Skwarecki
Friday 8:00am Filed to: ENVIRONMENT

Bee populations are in decline, and Cheerios wants to help. So far, so good. But they are sending free packets of wildflower seeds to people all over the country—and some of the flowers included are invasive species that, in some areas, you should probably not plant.



Forget-me-not is banned as a noxious weed in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example. The California poppy is nice in California, but listed as an “invasive exotic pest plant” in southeastern states. And many of the flowers on this list are not native to anywhere in the US, so they are not necessarily good matches for our local bees.

I asked Kathryn Turner, an ecologist who specializes in invasive plants and who was concerned about Cheerios’ approach, how it can be bad to plant a flower. “Context is important,” she said:

No plant is inherently ‘bad’, but many species can and have caused a great deal of damage when they are introduced into locations outside of their native range. Invasive species can out-compete the natives they encounter, they can take up all the space and use up all the resources, they can spread disease, and cause other physical changes to their new homes, all of which can have detrimental effects on native species, and on humans. It doesn’t happen with every plant and in every location, and scientists (like me!) are working now to figure out why that is, how to predict what will cause a problem, how to manage or prevent invasions.

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Read more: http://lifehacker.com/don-t-plant-those-bee-friendly-wildflowers-cheerios-i-1793370883

The article goes on to suggest other things that can help bees.

[ffr]

1. Their story is making news headlines today. I think they're on a collision course with the truth

The truth that their GMO crops are the reason honey bees and other pollinators are in decline.

Beeless Cheerios (Canadian test program)

Where Is Buzz the Bee? Why Cheerios' Beloved Bee Mascot Dissappeared From the Cereal Box
In 2016, about 44 percent of bee colonies in the U.S. have collapsed. The collapse of bee colonies was attributed to many factors, including habitat loss, diseases, pesticides and climate change.

This is not the first time Cheerios launched such initiative to save the bee population. Last year, Cheerios' goal of distributing and planting 100 million wildflower seeds was greatly surpassed, reaching 1.5 billion seeds. The company has also announced that 3,300 acres of nectar- and pollen-rich wildflowers will be available in their oat farms by 2020. - Natural World News

Meaning, by 2020, they're going to find that unless the wildflowers they're distributing are GMO strain, they too will be casualties in their oat fields, along with the bees they attract there.

If General Mills is serious, they need to take a leadership roll and just ban Roundup Ready GMO crops. Heirloom and organic is the only sustainable future.

[hunter]

2. I'm pretty sure that box was opened up a long time ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora's_box

The world's most dangerous invasive species is us.

In most places those honey bees so many people worry about are an invasive species too.

It'll all sort itself out in the next million years.

Kids who plant flowers may become biologists. That's a good thing.