When I first started my prairie wildflower garden, Partridge Peas were the first wildflowers to bloom. They splashed gold all over the garden just a few months after I planted the seeds.
Fast results
I didn’t see the flowers of other plants until at least a year later. Most prairie flowers are perennials, so they don’t bloom from seed that first year. They’re busy growing roots to sustain a long life. But Partridge Pea is an annual. It puts its whole soul into making flowers and completing its life cycle in one season.
Seed companies often include Partridge Pea in their prairie mixes. It gives gardeners something to love in the initial year. It also blooms for a long time — all summer and into fall.
Partridge Pea has feather-like leaves, which are long and symmetrical. In the center of the yellow flowers, blunt-ended, colorful stamens attract bees. You can hardly find a Partridge Pea without a bumblebee coming in for a landing or busily gathering pollen.
Unfussy flower
It needs no pampering. It grows wild in roadside ditches and fallow fields in eastern North America. It doesn’t need to be watered. In fact, it rather likes poor, dry soil. In rich, moist garden soil, Partridge Pea would soon find itself crowded out. But in harsher conditions, with less competition, Partridge Pea finds root space, and it thrives.
A friend to nature
As a leguminous plant, Partridge Pea pulls nitrogen out of the air and fertilizes the soil. The seeds sustain birds such as Bobwhites. Also, bees, butterflies, and other insects feed on the pollen or the leaves.
An arrangement with ants
It gives generously to fellow life forms, but still, Partridge Pea needs to defend itself against leaf-chewing insects. For that, it has a special arrangement with ants.
The ever-filling goblet
At the base of each compound leaf, close to the main stem, is an almost microscopic cup that provides a constant ooze of nectar. The cups, called nectaries have one job: serving nectar to ants. Ants are constantly running around on the plants, stopping at each nectary for a sweet drink.
Many plants provide nectar in the center of flowers for insects or birds, who provide pollination services. But that cannot be what Partridge Peas are doing. The nectaries are not inside the flowers. In fact, the nectaries are doing a brisk business before the plant even comes into bloom.
A closer look
I cut a stem, shook off a couple of ants, and looked at one of the nectaries under the microscope.
At first the flat top surface was smooth and level. Over the course of a few minutes, I watched a bead of nectar well up from the center. That is why we see ants running all over the plant.
What does the plant get?
Some caterpillars and other insects eat Partridge Peas. But a Partridge Pea with ants on it may give hungry insects a second thought. Ants can bite!
And so, with a green goblet of nectar, Partridge Peas pay off the ants in exchange for protection.
oh my God the nectary! amazing outrageously beautiful feature to see up close! thank you!
That nectary is really interesting. Great photo!