Tomorrow

Source:Roger Downer, OARDC, Entomologydowner.2@osu.edu330-263-3931WOOSTER, Ohio ­ See what birds do, bees do, even great spangled fritillaries do when Ohio State University’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster hosts “Habitats and Plantings for Pollinators” from 2-4 p.m. on Tuesday, June 24 ­ one of many programs scheduled nationwide in celebration of National Pollinator Week, June 22-28.The free public “walk-about” will search for and teach about creatures that pollinate flowers: honey bees, bumble bees, solitary bees, hawk moths, pollen wasps, flower flies, soldier beetles, butterflies, hummingbirds and a host of helpful others. What they need to survive and thrive, how they benefit people and ecosystems, and plants you can grow to attract them will be covered. Plants in the pollinator-friendly rose, aster, legume, buckwheat and salvia families, among others, will be seen close up and discussed.Roger Downer, an entomologist with Ohio State’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC), will lead the program. It starts at the arboretum’s Landscape Gardens on Williams Road.The arboretum itself is on the OARDC campus, 1680 Madison Ave., about 30 miles west of Akron, 60 miles south of Cleveland and 100 miles north of Columbus. Signs on campus will direct you to the arboretum.Sixty to 80 percent of Earth’s flowering plants depend on animal pollination, Downer notes. So do some 87 of the 124 most commonly grown crop plants.“Pollinators also sustain wildland plant communities that provide food and shelter for other wildlife,” Downer adds. Bees in particular “provide a valuable service to humans when they pollinate our fruit and vegetable plants and wildflowers,” he says. To find out more, call (330) 263-3761 or go to http://secrest.osu.edu/.OARDC is the research arm of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.- 30 -Links: National Pollinator Week, http://www.pollinator.org/.