Hogweed
A coarse roadside umbellifer that almost nobody plants and a great many insects depend on. Its flat white umbels are among the most heavily visited flowers in the British countryside, feeding short-tongued bees, hoverflies, beetles and wasps through the whole summer, and it flowers again in autumn after cutting.
Caution
The sap contains furanocoumarins and can cause a photosensitive burn on skin exposed to sunlight. The reaction is far milder than that of giant hogweed but is real, and gloves and sleeves are sensible when cutting it.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- High
- Pollen
- High
- As a honey crop
- Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally
- Which bees, and why
- The open shallow florets are accessible to almost every insect, which makes hogweed one of the best plants in Britain for short-tongued and small-bodied species that cannot use deep flowers. It is a mainstay for solitary bees, hoverflies and beetles alike.
Completely open florets on a flat platform — the most accessible flower architecture there is, and the reason so wide a range of insects uses it.
- Worth knowing
- Generous and highly accessible on both counts, and unusually long-running.
Flowering
- In flower
- June to September (northern hemisphere)
A long season, and it reflowers reliably after a mid-season verge cut.
Growing it
- Conditions
- Sun or part shade on almost any soil, and entirely undemanding.
- Size
- 50-200 cm tall.
- Native range
- Europe and western Asia, on road verge, hedge bank, meadow and woodland edge.
- Suits
- Meadow or wildflower area, Hedgerow, Large gardens
- It arrives without invitation on any verge or rough ground; the useful action is to cut it later rather than to plant it.
- Cutting verges in July removes the peak of its flowering, which is why verge cutting timing matters so much for insects.
- Sap causes photosensitive skin reactions in sunlight — wear sleeves when strimming it.
What it looks like
A robust hairy perennial with large lobed leaves and broad flat-topped umbels of small white flowers, the outer florets enlarged and asymmetric. Coarser and later than cow parsley, and far smaller than giant hogweed.
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.
Guides covering this plant
- Nectar plants explainedNectar is a payment. Understanding what the plant is buying, and how it controls the price, explains most of what flowers do and why some are useless to some bees.
- How to make a garden genuinely useful to beesMost bee-friendly advice covers flowers in June, which is the one thing bees are least short of. The gaps are at the ends of the year — and half the problem is not flowers at all.
- The best plants for beesA shortlist chosen on three criteria: how much nectar and pollen the plant produces, how accessible it is to different bees, and when it flowers. Season coverage matters more than any individual plant.
- Nesting habitat: the half of bee gardening that is not flowersAround seventy per cent of bee species nest in bare ground and most of the rest in stems, wood or cavities. A garden can be full of flowers and offer nowhere at all to live.
- Plants for solitary beesNine bee species in ten are solitary. They are small, short-tongued, short-lived and often tied to particular plants — which makes open shallow flowers, a long season and untidy ground more useful to them than a border of showy perennials.
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?