Lamb's ear

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus

Which bees, and why

The defining plant for observing wool carder bees. Females shave the leaf hairs for nest lining; males patrol the flower spikes and attack visiting bumblebees and honey bees using spines on the abdomen tip. Both behaviours are visible from a metre away and neither poses any risk to a watcher.

Short two-lipped flowers with nectar within reach of a honey bee, though bumblebees work them more efficiently.

Worth knowing

Good nectar, and uniquely valuable as nest material for wool carder bees, which cannot nest without a woolly-leaved plant within reach.

Flowering

In flower

June to August (northern hemisphere)

Six to eight weeks in midsummer.

When nectar flows

Good nectar from the whorled flowers, and the plant supplies nest material at the same time — an unusual double contribution.

Year-to-year variation

Reliable in the garden and never a crop.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun and sharp drainage. It rots in winter wet and hates humidity around the crown.

Size

30-60 cm in flower.

Native range

Turkey, Iran and the Caucasus.

Suits

Small gardens, Large gardens, Containers and window boxes

• Do not plant the non-flowering cultivar 'Silver Carpet' if you want the bees — it is grown precisely for not flowering.
• Cut the dead flower spikes only after the wool carder bees have finished, in late summer.
• Remove the worst of the mushy leaves after a wet winter rather than cutting the whole plant back.

What it looks like

A mat of thick oval leaves densely covered in white woolly hairs, sending up felted spikes carrying whorls of small purple-pink two-lipped flowers.