Comfrey - a great plant for pollinators

Last week was National Pollinator Week but it is never too late to write about pollinators. It is really cool when you really "SEE" what is happening under your very nose when it comes to pollinators in your front yard.

Why are pollinators a good thing? Some plants use the wind to spread their pollen but most plants need assistance from an animal or insect to get their flowers pollinated.

If a flower doesn't get pollinated, it won't set seed i.e. make the fruits, vegetables and nuts that we (as well as the rest of the animal kingdom) eat. If we didn't have something to pollinate our fruits and vegetables, we'd be very hungry and not have such a diverse diet.

I've grown comfrey for years but never realized until this year what a great pollinator plant it is. It is hardy, lives in pots or the ground, reseeds readily, is easy to pull up when you don't want it where it has appeared and blooms from April until the end of October.

This afternoon I went outside and glanced over at my thicket of comfrey and found half a dozen bumble bees buzzing around. They make a circuit of the flowers, disappear from view then come back for another circuit around the flowers. Over and over and over again. Besides the bumble bees there are tiny native bees that are buzzing around and crawling in the flowers themselves.

Comfrey has been used for healing purposes since at least 400 B.C. I've used it as a salve to heal small "ouchies" and I have a friend that uses the dried leaves in bathwater to get rid of the itch of chiggers and ticks.  When I read up on comfrey, I found that it had been used for food, as a dye, in cosmetics and as an ornamental. (Internal use is NOT recommended any more.)

I've planted a baby plant by the birdbath at the garden and we'll see how well it does there.  Anything that blooms at least 7 months of the year and is used by multiple pollinators deserves a home in one of our pollinator borders.