Tuesday, April 12, 2011

There's a colony of something living in the ground here...



On the dry slope across from the Capitol Columns there are well over a thousand of these...these...holes. I looked around on line a bit and found a near duplicate of my picture on this NCSU Extension page. So I'm comfortable calling them ground nesting bees. Anything more specific (sic) than that will be left to experts!

They seem to like the exposure of the slope: I found holes equally dispersed on bare ground, in Danthonia (that short curly xeric grass), Polystichum (a genus of moss), and (this is for you GrayC) another xeric plant, Antennaria (Pussytoes). I'm deducing that they like well drained soil as the extension service picture also suggests dry conditions.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love Antennaria! FYI, we have those very holes in the herb garden turf circle. I was wondering what they were, too. Figured they were ants, but never saw any. Now, we have an answer. Thanks, Chris.