Color is Important - It's Not Just Aesthetics

Native red salvia (Salvia coccinea)

Royal catchfly (Silene regia)

Evolution is an amazing force of nature. Over time, life evolves to best meet the needs and conditions of each living thing, plant or animal. Plants evolve what they are - their color and shape, for example, by design not to meet an aesthetic consideration. A few years ago, I was teaching a small group of elementary students about flowers and I asked them why flowers are the way they are. The answers surprised me a bit, but shouldn't have. Several of the students answered that flowers were pretty and smelled good because it pleased us as humans; the concept that too many of use seem to embrace - that we are the center of the universe. It never dawned on them that plants use those features to best ensure their survival. It has nothing to do with aesthetics. 

As I peruse posts on social media it never fails to reinforce the fact that too many of us fail to recognize this. We all-too-often design and plant our landscapes for aesthetics more than for wildlife, even those whoto are ardently planting pollinator gardens. We look for the unusual color forms, for example, and find greater interest in them than the ones that have evolved to persist. We gravitate to the white-fruited beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) and the various colors of red salvia for example. They seem more exotic and therefore seem to have more value, but there are good reasons why these color forms do not occur frequently in nature and why they generally do not persist. They are aberrant for a reason. The common forms are common for the same reason. 

Research would show us that red forms of red salvia attract the attention of pollinators far more than the white and lavender ones. Red attracts hummingbirds and white does not do so anywhere near the same extent. If it did, there would be naturally occurring populations of this plant outside of cultivated landscapes. Instead there rare ones once in a great while in a population of red ones. Red also seems to attract the attention of certain butterflies more than white ones. Large sulfur butterflies and various swallowtails are drawn to my red-flowered red salvia. So are bumblebees. There simply is no reason, in a living landscape to use other colors. It may please my eye, but it is a selfish act if I plant them. 

Red fruit is a very common occurrence in nature for a reason also. It is very common because it best signals to every fruit-eating bird and mammal that it is ripe and ready to be dispersed.  Fruit turns red only when the embryo inside the fruit is mature. It is a complex process directed by the living baby plant inside. Being green (and often bitter) ensures that it remain disguised until the right time.  When we plant individuals that are normally red, but a different color like white, we are confusing those that might feed on it. Not that some will not figure it out and feed on the fruit, but it serves the plant and the birds no good purpose.

Researchers have determined that bees tend to gravitate towards yellow flowers while butterflies choose purple more often than not. There is a reason why a great many wildflowers come in shades of those two colors. Even most white-petaled daisy-type wildflowers have a center of yellow disc ones. Thousands to millions of years of evolution have forged this relationship. Flowers are a serious business for the plant. Pollination is the only way most survive over time. There is nothing aesthetic about it. It is a life and death struggle and we'd be best to honor it. In social media I see a lot of posts decrying "cultivars" and their inferiority to "native" forms. The argument often centers on their supposed inferiority in nectar and pollen, but there is no evidence that these are the most important considerations. Too infrequently, the arguments center on color and flower structure.Pollinators choose flowers more on the latter, I suspect.  Being a "cultivar" is immaterial in itself. 

I have let a small patch of bright-red red salvia alone in a corner of my landscape, next to a firebush (Hamelia patens), and they have reseeded and now draw a lot of attention from the pollinators it evolved to provide for. Other color forms of this plant may provide more aesthetic interest to my eye, but I eschew them. In a living landscape such forms do nothing but distract from my goal of maximizing habitat. My eye is trained for that and not for the other things that draw the gardening attention of far too many. After all, a landscape is not a Monet painting - even if it could be.  Leave the paintings on your wall and in your coffee table books, not in your landscape.