During the first two observation periods (which coincided with oilseed rape and field bean flowering times respectively) there was significantly higher G. hederacea seed set in gardens than in the arable field margin settings (Fig 4A; F1,8 = 7.07; P = 0.029).
While improving local floral resources can help bumblebee populations in the long-term, maximising field bean pollination may require planting species that do not co-flower with beans, or cutting flower margins during bean flowering so encouraging bumblebees onto the crop.
Serve on toast with a broad bean flower to garnish, if you like.
Whether we needed a further mouth-tease – of fresh-water prawns in a pea veloute with a garnish of broad bean flowers – wasn't clear.
8,157 unigenes were produced from 16,875 ESTs derived from different J. curcas tissues [ 78, 79] and 3,394 unigenes from 5,619 ESTs from castor bean flowers.
The lists resulting from the Limma P = 0.01 analysis was used to identify over-expressed genes in one specific tissue (bean flower or leaf).
The clear prominence of bumblebees visiting beans is perhaps consistent with the morphology of bean flowers limiting access to nectar for smaller solitary bee species and honey bees, and supports conclusions made by Free (1993).
Pollinator communities visiting bean flowers in the field have been characterised more recently in North Africa (Aouar-Sadli et al., 2008; Benachour et al., 2007), and in 1976 in France, honey bees, bumblebees and several solitary bee species were observed visiting field beans with varying proportions of legitimate and raiding visits (Tasei, 1976).
As bean flowers remain open to bee visits for 3 days (Osborne et al., 1997) and assuming 8 h of pollinator foraging per day in good weather, this would mean that, on average, 58% of flowers could expect at least one visit.
Where the wide canyon wasn't actually barren or covered in weeds, it was invaded by flora foreign to the arroyo -- exotics like eucalyptus, acacia, castor bean and flowering plants that drove out native fauna.
The field bean crop flowering coincided with the second observation period (May–June).
