Hi, All.

If you have Moon Dust Yarrow I hope you'll chime in and let us know if bees and butterflies are visiting it and collecting nectar in your garden.

Bees and white cabbage butterflies are collecting nectar from the Claridge Druce and Wargrave Pink perennial geraniums (aka cranesbill) in my garden, but passing right over the two Moon Dust Yarrow I've had in my garden for the last 10 days or so.

Moon Dust Yarrow is hybridized. My understanding (from a Master Gardener) is hybridized versions of species plants may result in eliminating a plant's ability to attract butterflies, hummingbirds and/or bees. In the effort to make plants more attractive, disease resistant, etc., they lose their ability to attract and support pollinators.

So every hybridized plant we buy in the hope of attracting pollinators is suspect until proven otherwise.

Most yarrows are highly invasive. Moon Dust Yarrow is advertised as being sterile. I wonder if that has eliminated its attraction for pollinators?

Does anyone here have butterflies, bees, etc. visiting their Moon Dust Yarrow?

Jeanne

Hybrid sterility can make plants more attractive to pollinators, some flowers once fertilized stop producing nectar and some hybrids avoid this. Other times hybrids may have a mixed morphology that doesn't fit pollinators as well. It really depends so you are right to be suspicious (prime example of a highly attractive sterile plant is Salvia x Amistad) .

I only grow local forms of the native yarrow, Achillea borealis (everything else dies lol) so I can't speak on your plant. However, even my native yarrow is not attractive to butterflies. The small flowers are pollinated by smaller bees, hoverflies, and pollinating beetles but not butterflies in my experience.