Phenology
The timing of biological events through the year — when a plant flowers and when a bee emerges.
Definition
Phenology is what makes specialist relationships possible and fragile. The ivy bee emerges in September for ivy and nothing else; several Andrena species emerge to coincide with willow; squash bees fly before dawn because Cucurbita flowers open then and close by mid-morning. Where the two timings shift at different rates, the relationship breaks.
Where the word gets used loosely
Flowering dates in any calendar are a guide rather than a schedule, and nectar secretion is far more weather-dependent than flowering is. A plant in full bloom in the wrong conditions offers very little, which is the honest answer to why a lime yielded nothing this year.
See also
Other botany terms
Sources
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production — Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2016) · Systematic review Link
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.