Lavender Farm Biodiversity
It may have been questionable to be outside today. Temperatures were pretty hot. In fact, there were heat advisories earlier this week about a heat wave this weekend. Air quality in the Denver metro has also been poor; these hot sunny days really aid the development of ozone pollution.
Never the less, the Lavender Days festival at the SheGrows farm in Arvada, Colorado occurred to celebrate the cultivation of lavender. And because lavender grows in hot sunny climates like Provence, France I'd say this was a fitting day to attend.
iNaturalist is a place to document flora and fauna in the wild, but I learned a lot about lavender cultivation at this event, and to be honest it is pretty interesting! The genus for lavender is Lavandula, and the two species at the farm were Lavandula angustifolia (English lavender), and Lavandula x intermedia (French lavender - although according to Google this is also called Portuguese lavender...so who knows).
But the real reason I felt this journal post was worthy for iNaturalist is because the lavender farm created such great habitat for pollinating insects and other forms of biodiversity. A woman at the farm explained to a crowd of lavender enthusiasts that right now the lavender oils are all in the flowers and buds and so for this reason honey bees and bumble bees are feeding in droves. According to her there were no bees in sight two weeks ago, and today they were everywhere.
In addition to bees, there were at least three butterfly species that I observed at the farm: skippers, swallowtails, and cabbage whites. I love these charismatic pollinators. And to be clear, there were actually many other flowers at the farm: sunflowers, pea flowers, cosmos, peonies, and roses. The owners of this farm take pride in their status as a pollinator habitat hub as was evidenced by their proud display of a National Wildlife Federation Certified Wildlife Habitat plaque.
Events like these are a great reminder that our man-made ecosystems (farms, orchards, gardens) are still habitat for various forms of biodiversity. And celebrating the different colors throughout the year (in this case purple for July) is also a fun way to mark time.
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