Plantago patagonica, Woolly Plantain

Artist: Sarah Red-Laird

Title: Bee Habitat in Cyanotype 43

Location: Blake Ranch, Montana

Project: Buzz on the Range

Flower: Plantago patagonica, Woolly Plantain

Materials: Cyanotype, barnwood

Field Season: 2023

Composed: 2023

This project is a collaboration with Western Sustainability Exchange that attempts to demonstrate, with our producer partners as the focus, alternative practices to promote healthy bee populations. We are working in southwestern Montana’s Paradise Valley to support a coalition of five ranchers on 8,900 acres of range. In this project we aim to find innovative ways to establish nectar and pollen producing flowers through facilitating endozoochory (dispersion of seed through ruminant dung (aka COW POO!!)) and utilizing rotational, adaptive grazing.

There is an urgent need for resilient soil, grass, and bee habitat in our rangelands. Though most of the folks that we work with love planting for bees simply because it’s fun, interesting, and the right thing to do – in order for this to be scalable, it can only be achieved through fiscally viable approaches. The Buzz on the Range project attempts to demonstrate, with ranchers as the focus (supported by BGO, MSU, and WSE), alternative practices to promote healthy bee populations, while also improving pasture plant diversity and healthy cows.

BGO is proud to support the ranchers by monitoring bee communities and flower growth, advising on seed mixes and dispersal methods, and will assist in educational material creation and teaching workshops at the conclusion of the project (once we figure out what methods and mixes work well).

This little plant is just adorable. I couldn’t help but grab a few from my control plot at Blake Ranch. Though I didn’t see bees on the plant while I was there, I have read that bumble bees will visit it.

Plantago patagonica is a native and grows all over North America, from Canada to Mexico and isn’t picky about it’s habitat. It will grow in grasslands, sagebrush steppe, fields, and roadsides; on plains and in valleys.

SW Native Americans use the plant as a medicine (headaches, diarrhea, babies' colic, and to reduce appetite and prevent obesity) and eat the seeds.