Our rainy spring and early summer seem to have been agreeable to the small Yellow Flag Iris plants (Iris pseudacorus) in our damper areas. They were imported into this country from Europe and Asia as ornamentals in the latter half of the 18th Century. Since then, they’ve become a beautiful invasive problem, even squeezing out cat tails.
Yellow Flags need small pollinators, such as the Sweat Bees seen in the images below.
As you may have known or guessed, Sweat Bees get their name from their attraction to the salt in the perspiration on summer travelers (who often are also dusted with pollen). When the light is right, the metallic green under the thorax hair of Sweat Bees shines through brightly:
(Brooklin, Maine)