Spanish needle

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

The shallow composite head excludes nothing, and it is worked by honey bees, small sweat bees, butterflies and hoverflies simultaneously all year round.

Worth knowing

Among the most important sources in Florida beekeeping, and the one that carries colonies between the citrus, palmetto and gallberry flows.

Flowering

In flower

January to December (northern hemisphere)

Effectively year-round in Florida, with peaks in spring and autumn. The continuity is what makes it valuable.

When nectar flows

Steady rather than heavy, and available essentially all year, which in a landscape of short intense flows is worth more than volume.

What it does to the honey

Gives a light amber honey with a mild, faintly fruity sweetness and a clean finish — an easy honey rather than a dramatic one.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on any disturbed ground, tolerating drought, poor soil and mowing.

Size

0.5-1.5 m.

Native range

Tropical and subtropical America, including Florida and the Caribbean. Naturalised across much of the warm world.

Suits

Meadow or wildflower area, Farm scale

• Not something anyone plants deliberately in its native range, and worth tolerating at the field edge where honey matters.
• Do not introduce it outside its range.

What it looks like

A straggling annual or short-lived perennial with divided leaves and small white-rayed daisy flowers with yellow centres, followed by the barbed black seeds that stick to clothing and give it its names.