Michaelmas daisy
The best autumn perennial a temperate border can carry, and the one that closes the gap between the last of the summer flowers and ivy. Michaelmas daisies flower from late August into October in dense sheets of small daisy heads, and they are worked by everything still on the wing — late bumblebee workers, honey bees building winter stores, hoverflies and butterflies stocking up before hibernation.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- High
- Pollen
- High
- As a honey crop
- Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus
- Which bees, and why
- Worked by late bumblebee workers and new queens fattening for hibernation, by honey bees adding to winter stores, and by red admirals and small tortoiseshells. The flat open head is a landing platform, so it serves butterflies and hoverflies as readily as bees.
Short open florets with fully accessible nectar — usable by short-tongued bees, flies and butterflies alike, which is why the visitor list is so long.
- Worth knowing
- Rated high for both, and delivered in September and October when the ratings matter most. In a garden, asters and ivy together carry the entire autumn.
Flowering
- In flower
- August to October (northern hemisphere)
Late August to mid-October in most of temperate Europe, holding on into November in a mild autumn.
- When nectar flows
- Nectar and pollen are both offered on warm autumn days. As with all composites, each 'flower' is many small florets, so a single head keeps an insect busy.
- Year-to-year variation
- Reliable in the garden almost every year. Not a honey crop at any scale a gardener will encounter.
Growing it
- Conditions
- Full sun to light shade and moist but well-drained soil. Fully hardy and easy.
- Size
- 60-120 cm depending on cultivar; dwarf forms from 30 cm.
- Native range
- Eastern North America. Long grown and widely naturalised across Europe.
- Suits
- Small gardens, Large gardens, Containers and window boxes, Meadow or wildflower area
- Choose mildew-resistant cultivars, or grow Symphyotrichum novae-angliae and the small-flowered species asters instead — the classic novi-belgii cultivars are notoriously prone to powdery mildew.
- Divide every three years in spring to keep the clumps vigorous and free-flowering.
- Leave the dead stems standing through winter rather than cutting back in autumn. Hollow stems are overwintering habitat for solitary bees and other insects, and tidying in October removes it.
- Avoid double-flowered cultivars, which trade the accessible florets for extra petals and offer far less.
What it looks like
An upright clump-forming perennial with narrow leaves and broad flat sprays of small daisy flowers, most often violet-blue or mauve with a yellow disc, also pink and white.
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
- 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 flowers for beesHerbaceous flowers rather than trees and shrubs, chosen for output and length of season. Most of them are things you can grow in a border or a container.
- Bee plants through the yearThe gaps matter more than the peaks. Almost every garden has plenty in June and nothing in February, and it is the empty months that limit what a garden can support.
- Autumn plants for beesAutumn forage decides how well colonies enter winter. It is also when one plant does more work than everything else combined, and most people regard it as a nuisance.
- 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 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.
- 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.
- 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?