Andrena polemonii, f, face, New Castle co., Delaware
What we don't know...about Andrena polemonii. See this specimen? This came from the wonderful native plant center in northern Delaware called Mount Cuba. Matt Sarver found it doing surveys of bees and targetted the plants that had specialist bees known to associate with them. One of those plants is Polemonium reptans which is the host to the bee pictured. So no big deal that Matt found a bunch of the bees except for the fact that the nearest known record for that species was on the border of Ohio and WV. Does that mean they flew in from WV to visit Mt. Cuba? Almost certainly not, more likely than not there are pockets of A. polemonii between these two sites...just no one has looked. Photo by Anders Croft.
We Are Made One with What We Touch and See
We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.
- Oscar Wilde. Original public domain image from Flickr