Friends of Rose Canyon
The Secret Life of Coyote Melon Flowers
See Coyote melon flowers now along the edges of the main trail
From the bottom of the Regents trail, walk east
One morning in Rose Canyon I stopped to look inside a coyote melon flower and noticed a strange structure. Rather than the familiar straight pole with bees crawling around it collecting pollen, there was a structure like a wheel. I realized I had never noticed something fundamental about my Coyote melon friend of many years: it has separate male and female flowers. This is unusual in the plant world. Ninety percent of plant species have flowers with male and female parts in the same flower.
Watch Honey bees gathering pollen
(hit "back" on browser when done)

This is a male Coyote melon flower. Honey bees stick the pollen on their back legs - see the yellow lumps. Pollen contains protein and fat, so they take it to the hive for food. These worker bees are all females and do all the hive's work: foraging, tending the larvae, making honey, defending the hive. The males (called drones) spend their lives seeking to mate with a virgin queen.
Watch Honey bees gathering nectar
(hit "back" on browser when done)

This female Coyote melon flower has no pollen. It attracts bees with nectar, which the bees suck into a special sac called a crop. To get to the nectar, the bees have to squeeze past the female flower structure, which is sticky and sometimes traps pollen from the bee's body. Only if pollen fertilizes the female flower does a melon develop. No bees, no coyote melons.
This is a native Squash bee. Honey bees visit many kinds of flowers, but our native Squash bees visit only squash flowers. No squash plants, no Squash bees. Our native Coyote melon (Cucurbita palmata) and Squash bees evolved together over thousands of years. Honey bees did not live in the Americas until European colonists brought them in the 1600's.
How to find a Squash bee

They start foraging early in the morning, and sometimes spend the night in a flower (peak inside). If you grow squash or pumpkins, you might find one there. They look similar to Honey bees, so check out photos online. Like most of our roughly 700 species of native bees, Squash bees don't live in a hive. The female digs a tunnel in the ground, ending in several chambers. She makes a ball of pollen, puts it in a chamber and lays an egg on it so the larva will have food. The larva eats the pollen, but does not pupate into an adult bee and emerge until the following year, just as the Coyote melon flowers are once again blooming.
Since the bees' pollen delivery service pollinated this female flower, a Coyote melon is developing. As the melons ripen, they turn yellow, and look like tennis balls scattered in the canyon, but they remain fibrous and bitter. Because Rose Canyon is protected as a habitat preserve for native species, it provides a home for both our native Coyote melon plants and our native Squash bees.
Coyote melon June 2020
These Coyote melon vines (Cucurbita palmata) are only a few months old but are already up to 15' long. They grow outward from a huge tuberous root, which can weigh over 100 pounds. In the fall these vines will shrivel and die, the root go dormant, and the plant seem to vanish. But come next spring, new vines will sprout from the root and once again grow like Jack's magic beanstalk.
‌
Friends of Rose Canyon
Debby Knight, Executive Director
858-597-0220
Forward this email to friends
Encourage them to join FRC: It's free
They'll receive our occasional emails just as you do