20 Common Urban Pollinators in SoCal
Why are pollinators like the fiery skipper above important? Here’s a short summary from Pollinator Partnership.
Somewhere between 75% and 95% of all flowering plants on the earth need help with pollination—they need pollinators. Pollinators provide pollination services to over 180,000 different plant species and more than 1200 crops. That means that one out of every three bites of food you eat is there because of pollinators. If we want to talk dollars and cents, pollinators add 217 billion dollars to the global economy. In addition to the food that we eat, pollinators support healthy ecosystems that clean the air, stabilize soils, protect from severe weather, and support other wildlife.
These are four pollinators that I see in my garden: Sonoran bumblebee, cabbage moth, ladybug and hover fly.
Read more about common urban pollinators in Southern California and see photos of all 20. Look for them in your garden if you live in SoCal.