It’s now late Spring. Insect numbers have been rising rapidly over the last fortnight - particularly those of nectar-feeders like wasps, bees, flies and beetles.

Perfect timing for the first flowering of a plant that oozes nectar - the Prickly Teatree Leptospermum continentale. 

Anatomy of the teatree flower

The teatree flower, like that of many Myrtaceae, provides an accessible and abundant source of both nectar and pollen.

The centre of the flower takes the form of a wide circular bowl. This makes the nectar available to virtually all insects, irrespective of the shape of their mouthparts.

Anthers are also very accessible, sitting at the top of long, upright stamens which ring the floral cup.

One of the first Prickly Teatree bushes to flower this Spring was a relatively tall plant - about 1.5m high - in the middle of our ‘grasstree sea’. This is an open area, so the white mass of flowers covering the spindly branches was very obvious - both to us and a host of insects.

Over several sunny days, we observed many different insect species feeding on the teatree flowers. The diversity was pretty impressive!

The bees

The wasps

The flies

The beetles

The butterflies

A cockroach

The predators - Spiders and Ants

The wrap-up

One straggly little plant… two weeks of flowering… so many insects!

• 5 orders (plus spiders)

• 23 families

• 33+ species