Purple Tansy - May 8, 2024

 Here are too many photos of purple tansy, or lacy phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia)!  Purple tansy is not in the same family as the invasive perennial, common tansy.  Purple tansy is a lovely bee magnet annual.  

Most of mine grows in the compost pile. 

Large carpenter bee in flight.  They are warier than other bees, and don't linger on individual flowers long enough for good photos!

Caught one!

A series of close-ups.

I'm no bee expert, but going by the shiny abdomen, this is also a large carpenter bee (large is part of their name, there are also small carpenter bees)  Bumble bees are fuzzy all over.

One thing I like about purple tansy is the curl.  Because it resembles the fiddleheads on ferns, in the UK it is sometimes called fiddlehead.  The flowers open in sequence, the curl unfurling. 

This one has finished blooming and the seeds will ripen in the same order the flowers opened. 

Purple tansy at sunrise. 

This is a hoverfly.  Look how it rubs its tiny little legs all over the stamen!  Hoverflies eat nectar for energy for flying, and pollen for nutrients for sexual maturation.  No, I didn't know that off the top of my head, I wondered why it was after pollen and not nectar like the other pollinators!  Now I know, you know, and we won't forget this hoverfly information.

That's purple tansy.