Snoozing Squash Bees

Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

Jul 13 2025 | 00:04:22

00:00 / 00:04:22

Show Notes

Squash bees are out early in the morning and moving pollen around well before honey bees even arrive. Research done by the Department of Agriculture found that squash bees “are largely responsible for the production of cultivated squash across North America and much of the Americas.” That is very cool, right? I like buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) and I haven’t talked about it in many years, so this was fun. If you were to do a little homework you’d find that there has been a lot of research on both the seed of the gourd and also of the tuberous…

Other Episodes

Episode

May 31, 2025 • 00:04:10

High in the Mountains

Maianthemum racemosum is in the family Asparagaceae and there are two subspecies of Maianthemum The subspecies out here in the mountainous forests of the...

Episode 0

December 03, 2022 • 00:04:01

Goodding Willow by a Pond in the Hills

Leslie Newton Goodding had a busy career. It was when he worked for the U. S. Department of Agriculture that he collected the type...

Episode

October 24, 2014 •

Mentzelia pumila

Petey waxes poetic about the plants and animals found around his little homestead and finally focuses on a plant called Mentzelia pumila. Let’s listen.