Ribes are red, Violets are blue, these Valentine’s flowers benefit hummingbirds too! <3

February 2024 Plant Availability

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Greetings,

Happy February!

We hope you are able to hunker down and stay cozy during the storms this week! Before we dive into our featured plants of the month, we just want to say a quick thank you for the outpouring of love and support in the wake of Laura’s passing. We are so lucky to be a part of this California native plant community with such incredible people that have been part of our journey, especially those of you that have stuck with us all these 20+ years after our humble beginnings. We appreciate you all for helping to make Laura’s brainchild such a success all these years past and years to come as we continue evolve and grow <3

We’ve got love on the brain with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, so this month we are sharing some of the many species of California native plants with showy red, pink, and white flowers that begin to bloom this time of year for the perfect home-grown bouquet for your valentine 😉 Plus, you can “feed two birds with one hand” with these species because they provide abundant nectar at a critical time for the hummingbirds!

Which Hummingbird Species Stay in the Bay?

We are lucky enough to have hummingbirds throughout the Bay Area all year round, so it’s important to do what we can to help get them through the cold and dreary dregs of winter! There are three species of hummingbirds that frequent the Bay Area, including the most well-known Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna), as well as Allen’s Hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin), and the Rufus Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus). Anna’s hummingbirds are by far the most numerous around these parts, and most of them do not migrate south from here during winter like the Rufus and Allen’s species do.

Habitats for Happy Hummingbirds

Our local hummingbirds prefer to live in habitats that include the edges of forested areas and groves of trees, but they are also drawn to gardens with a variety of plants– especially California native species!

The ideal habitat for hummingbirds in the garden includes a blend of tall trees for nesting, shrubs and vines for perches to rest on, and open patches of meadow or ground cover plant species to provide a variety of food sources. Most folks are aware that nectar is a major food source for hummingbirds, but you might not know that insects and arachnids play an important role in hummingbird ecology too. Hummingbirds eat insects for protein to supplement the sugars they get from flower nectar, and they use spider silk to bind their nesting material and attach it to branches, so maintaining healthy and diverse insect and spider communities in your garden will benefit your hummingbird visitors greatly. Additionally, hummingbirds need access to fresh water throughout the entire year, so providing a clean and well-maintained water source is ideal. They tend to prefer fresh moving water as opposed to a stationary birdbath, so small fountains and misters are great options to help them hydrate 🙂

Why the Obsession With Red Tubular Flowers?

For starters, hummingbirds have the highest heart rate of any animal on Earth! At rest, a hummingbird’s heart beats approximately 150 times per minute! In order to keep up with their high metabolism, hummingbirds have to drink up to twice their body weight in nectar everyday. To give you some perspective, humans would need to eat about 300 hamburgers a day just to survive if we had the same metabolic rate as hummingbirds.

Flower nectar has a relatively high sugar content, so it has a big energy pay off relative to other food sources. Hummingbirds’ long narrow bills and tongues have co-evolved with plants that have long, tubular flowers as a strategy for outcompeting bees and beetles for access to their nectar. Hummingbirds have also evolved a heightened color sensitivity in the red to yellow range thanks to the dense concentration of cones in their retinas. The cones themselves contain pigments and oil droplets in shades of red and yellow that seemingly act as filters, making reds and yellows more vibrant, whereas other colors like blue appear more dull to them. Although hummingbirds are initially drawn to flowers with red, pink, and orange flowers, they are very smart and adapt their preferences for flowers based on the nectar content despite the flower color. Nonetheless, red tubular flowers often correspond with high nectar availability due to their co-evolution with hummingbirds as their primary pollinators 🙂

Give Your Sweetie Something Special this Valentine’s Day AND Support the Hummingbirds With These Spectacular Species!

Salmonberry

Rubus spectabilis

Available in D40 pots for $10.90 and 2-gal for $30.25

Salmonberry is a deciduous shrub that can grow to a height of 6 – 10 ft. and spread out to form thick stands.
Its bright pink to dark red blooms are visible from February to March and are a favorite of hummingbirds!
This tall and erect shrub looks beautiful at the edges of a garden.
The blooms are followed by edible yellow-orange to red berries.
This attractive shrub does best on moist to wet places from stream banks to wooded areas.

Red flowering currant

Ribes sanguineum

Available in D40 pots for $9.90 and $10.90, TB4 for $15.70, and 2-gal for $30.25 each!

A deciduous shrub that grows 6.5 – 13 ft. tall and up to 7 ft. wide
Lime-colored leaves and long showy pink flower clusters emerge in late winter, and cover the plant throughout the spring
Provides invaluable nectar for hummingbirds and supports dozens of butterfly and moth species (likely 80 species according to Calscape!)
Its blue-black berries produced in the summer are edible, although somewhat astringent…A variety of birds sure love them though!
Its aromatic leaves tend to deter deer
When grown inland, this species is happiest in bright shade with light water, although it can tolerate more sun with moderate water
Along the coast, it can tolerate full shade to full sun and is drought tolerant even in sunnier locations

Black Sage

Salvia mellifera

Available in D-16 pots for $8.50 and D-40 pots for $9.90 each!

A spring-flowering evergreen shrub with a fresh and spicy scent.
Reaches 3 – 6 ft. tall and up to 6 – 8 ft. wide.
Drought tolerant when established; needs no summer water in most areas, but better looking and a lower fire hazard with once-a-month water.
An excellent plant for quickly covering dry sunny slopes & providing erosion control.
Many small birds and quail like to eat the seeds and the light blue to lavender flowers provide nectar that attracts hummingbirds, butterflies, & native bees.
Black sage is said by bee keepers to be one of the best nectar sources for honeybees.

Red Bush Monkeyflower

Diplacus puniceus

(Previously named Mimulus aurantiacus var. puniceus)

Available in D16 pots for $8.50 and 1-gal for $15.70 each!

Red Bush Monkeyflower is a small, fast-growing shrub that reaches about 2 ft. tall and wide.
This southern cousin differs from our local orange sticky monkeyflower by producing bright red flowers and keeping a compact form.
The glorious trumpet shaped flowers can last for most of the year (depending on rainfall pattern), which is great news for the hummingbirds that drink the nectar!
Avoid direct watering in late summer or early fall as it may kill this plant. Best to let it go dormant for the hottest months of the year, and then watch it come back with the fall-winter rains.

Bee Plant

Scrophularia californica

Available in D-16 pots for $7.30 each!

2 – 4 ft. tall perennial with spikes of reddish flowers that bloom from February through May
A favorite of hummingbirds, bees, bumblebees, small wasps, butterflies, and other pollinators as it is a prolific producer of nectar!
Great for shady gardens and butterfly gardens
Drought tolerant, but will look good longer in the season with a bit of summer moisture.

Scarlet Bugler

Penstemon centranthifolius

Available in 1-gal pots for $14.50 each!

Scarlet bugler is an upright perennial herb that is summer deciduous and grows from 2 to 4 feet tall and about 1 foot wide.
A series of long red flowers appear in the early spring through summer.
The flowers are a strong humming bird attractant!
Prefers well draining soil but does fine with clay soil and poor drainage.
It provides abundant color as a flowering accent plant on banks or mixed with other flowering perennials around rocks and pathways.
Bonus for those that have cold winters, Scarlet Bugler is very cold tolerant!

Erythranthe cardinalis

Scarlet Monkeyflower

Available in 4” pots for $7.90 each!

This herbaceous creeping perennial grows 3 ft. tall by 2 ft. wide.
Its very showy red tubular flowers are an important nectar source for hummingbirds.
Scarlet Monkeyflower inhabits shady, wet places
An abundance of its scarlet red flowers bloom from late February to early June
Reliably self sows its seeds

Sources

Erskine, Stephanie. “Creating Hummingbird Gardens in the Coastal Bay Area.” UCANR Blogs, UC Master Gardeners of San Mateo & San Francisco Counties, 1 Oct. 2021, ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=50736.

Gedney, Jack. “Hummingbirds Can Be Found in Bay Area, Even in Winter.” The Mercury News, The Mercury News, 15 Jan. 2024, www.mercurynews.com/2024/01/15/hummingbirds-can-be-found-in-marin-even-in-winter/.

Kumar, Arvind. “Hummingbird Gardening.” California Native Plant Society, 7 Mar. 2017, www.cnps.org/gardening/hummingbird-gardening-5098.

Stay Safe, ‘Bee’ Well, and Go Natives! from all of us at the Watershed Nursery

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