Goldenrod
North America's most important late-season nectar plant, and a flower that has spent a century being blamed for someone else's hay fever. Goldenrod fills old fields and roadsides with dense yellow plumes in September, feeding colonies building winter stores and bumblebee queens fattening for hibernation. It is insect-pollinated with heavy sticky pollen that cannot travel on the wind — the allergen is ragweed, which flowers at the same time and is far less conspicuous.
Where not to plant it
Solidago canadensis and S. gigantea are seriously invasive across central and eastern Europe and parts of Asia, forming dense monocultures on abandoned land. They are excellent bee plants and a genuine ecological problem, and both things are true at once.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- Very high
- Pollen
- Very high
- As a honey crop
- Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years
- Which bees, and why
- Worked by an enormous range of insects — honey bees, late bumblebees, solitary bees, wasps, beetles, butterflies and predatory insects hunting among them. Goldenrod supports more specialist insect species in North America than almost any other plant genus.
Tiny open florets massed on a landing platform, with exposed nectar and pollen. About as accessible as forage gets.
- Worth knowing
- Top-rated for both nectar and pollen, delivered at the moment they matter most. For North American beekeeping this is the most important single genus in the second half of the year.
Flowering
- In flower
- August to October (northern hemisphere)
The last major flow of the North American year, and the one that determines whether colonies enter winter with adequate stores.
- When nectar flows
- Heavy and dependable in a normal autumn. A colony working goldenrod produces a strong and genuinely unpleasant sweaty smell while the honey ripens, which disappears entirely once it is capped.
- Year-to-year variation
- Reliable most years, and structurally critical rather than commercially glamorous — a failed goldenrod flow means feeding sugar syrup.
What it does to the honey
Goldenrod nectar produces a deep golden, strongly flavoured honey with a hay-and-clove spice and a dry astringent finish. Its high glucose content makes it set fast and coarsely.
Growing it
- Conditions
- Full sun, any reasonable soil, drought-tolerant once established.
- Size
- 60-200 cm depending on species.
- Native range
- North America predominantly, with a few Eurasian species. Canada goldenrod is widely naturalised and invasive across central and eastern Europe.
- Suits
- Meadow or wildflower area, Large gardens, Small gardens
- Choose a well-behaved garden species such as Solidago rugosa 'Fireworks' rather than the rampant Canada goldenrod, which spreads aggressively by rhizome.
- Leave the stems standing over winter — hollow stems are solitary bee habitat and the seed heads feed finches.
- In Europe, prefer the native Solidago virgaurea. Canada goldenrod is invasive across large parts of the continent and is a listed problem species in several countries.
What it looks like
Upright perennials with narrow leaves and large plume-shaped or flat-topped sprays of tiny bright yellow composite flowers. Around a hundred and twenty species occur in North America and several are widely naturalised in Europe.
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
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.
- Why botanical family is the most useful thing to know about a bee plantCorolla depth, floret arrangement and whether nectar is exposed are inherited traits. Learn a family and you can predict a plant nobody has catalogued.
- A bee-friendly garden in the United StatesAround 4,000 native bee species and a continent too large for one planting list. What transfers is the method — regional natives, a long season and bare ground — rather than the species.
- Specialist bees and the plants they cannot do withoutA large minority of bee species collect pollen from one plant genus and will starve rather than switch. For them a flowery garden is not forage — it is scenery around the one thing they need.
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?