Marmeleiro

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Worked by Africanized honey bees and by an exceptional native bee fauna — the caatinga holds many species found nowhere else, including specialist oil-collecting bees.

Worth knowing

A good nectar and pollen source in a semi-arid landscape with limited alternatives.

Flowering

In flower

June to September (southern hemisphere)

A dry-season flow, with flowering triggered by the preceding rains rather than by calendar.

When nectar flows

Generous where the scrub is extensive, and the basis of a significant regional industry.

Year-to-year variation

Rainfall-dependent. A poor wet season means a poor flow, and drought years in the caatinga are severe.

What it does to the honey

Contributes a light floral sweetness with a faint resinous edge from the aromatic foliage.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on dry, poor, often stony soil, and adapted to prolonged drought. It drops its leaves entirely in the dry season.

Size

1-3 m tall, forming open scrub.

Native range

Northeastern Brazil, in caatinga thorn scrub. The genus Croton is pantropical with over a thousand species.

Suits

Farm scale

• Adapted to semi-arid conditions and not a temperate garden plant.
• The caatinga is a fire-adapted and drought-adapted system, and the shrubs regenerate readily after both.

What it looks like

Low aromatic shrubs with grey-green often silvery-hairy leaves and slender spikes of small cream flowers, strongly scented when crushed.