Field scabious
A tall lilac pincushion of chalk grassland and roadside verges, and one of the most productive late-summer nectar plants in Europe. Field scabious flowers from July into September on long wiry stems, and it supports its own specialist bee — the large scabious mining bee, which collects pollen from this plant and its close relatives and nothing else.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- Very high
- Pollen
- High
- As a honey crop
- Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus
- Which bees, and why
- Worked by honey bees, bumblebees, solitary bees, butterflies and hoverflies. Its most interesting relationship is with Andrena hattorfiana, the large scabious mining bee — a scarce specialist that provisions its cells with scabious pollen exclusively, and which disappears wherever the plant does.
Short florets on a flat head, with nectar within reach of short-tongued bees. Accessible to almost everything.
- Worth knowing
- Among the best late-summer nectar plants in the northern European flora, and one of the few that supports an obligate specialist bee.
Flowering
- In flower
- July to September (northern hemisphere)
Squarely in the late-summer gap, when clovers have finished and ivy has not started.
- When nectar flows
- High and sustained nectar production. Individual florets open in succession across the head over days, so a single flower stays productive for a long time.
- Year-to-year variation
- Dependable on the dry calcareous soils it likes. Not a honey crop.
Growing it
- Conditions
- Full sun, dry, well-drained and preferably chalky soil. It dislikes rich damp ground.
- Size
- 50-100 cm.
- Native range
- Europe and western Asia.
- Suits
- Meadow or wildflower area, Large gardens, Small gardens
- One of the best wildflowers for a dry sunny border as well as a meadow — it looks like a garden plant and behaves like a wild one.
- Cut back after flowering for a second flush in a warm autumn.
- The garden scabious (Scabiosa) and the smaller devil's-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) do similar jobs; devil's-bit flowers latest of all and is the best of the three for extending the season.
What it looks like
A rough-haired perennial with deeply cut leaves and flat pincushion heads of lilac-blue florets, the outer ring larger than the inner, held on long slender stems.
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- Bumblebees: Behaviour, Ecology, and Conservation — Oxford University Press (2010) · Monograph
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides covering this plant
- Plants that attract honey bees specificallyHoney bees have short tongues and work in large numbers, which means they want different plants from bumblebees. Half the flowers sold as bee-friendly are out of their reach entirely.
- Making a wildflower area for beesA meadow is made by reducing fertility and weakening grass, not by scattering seed on a lawn. The single most useful plant in the process is a parasite.
- A bee-friendly garden in Britain and IrelandAround 270 bee species, one honey bee among them, and a climate that gives you flowering months at both ends of the year that most of the world does not get. The British gaps are February and late June, and both are fixable.
- Plants for bumblebeesLong tongues, big bodies, cold tolerance and an annual colony that has to build from a single queen. Bumblebees can use flowers honey bees cannot reach, and they need forage at both ends of the year when honey bees are indoors.
Tools for planning planting
- Flowering calendar
What should I plant so that something is always in flower for bees?
- Bee-friendly garden planner
What should I plant in the space I actually have?
- Plant recommendation tool
Which plant fills this specific gap?