Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by zepearl 717 days ago
My favourite flower, which I have just discovered: Phacelia (blue/violet color) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phacelia_tanacetifolia )

1) Seeds easy to find in most stores.

2) Each strand has an array of flowers which bloom serially => quite long blooming timespan (and damage by bad weather is limited if it affected only the flowers).

3) Bumblebees absolutely love them (this year I put exclusively Phacelia seeds into 1 of my 2 big pots on the balcony, with max seed density, and often there were up to 10 bumblebees at once per pot checking them), and I absolutely love bumblebees (they look clumsy, they're kind of funny + they absolutely ignore me, respectively when they happen to fly in my direction and they notice me they take a turn as soon as their flight envelope allows them to)

4) This might be just random or caused by some other factor like weather/neighbours/whatever, anyway:

since I planted this year Phacelia flowers and the bumblebees started coming I have hardly seen any wasps nor especially hornets (I've seen twice a hornet flying by, but it took a large curve from my balcony - during the same timespan at the other sides of my flat I noticed four times hornets investigating in front of the windows). Last year (without Phacelia/bumblebees) I had a lot more problems with wasps&hornets => maybe wasps & hornets noticed the bumblebees and thought "ah, already taken/busy!" and therefore marked my balcony as a no-go zone?

EDIT:

I recommend the app "PlantNet" for Android ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=829216199869931637... ) & iOS ( https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/plantnet/id600547573 ): take a picture of your plant/flower and you get the name.