PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Baccharis / Saltmarsh Baccharis
Wikimedia Commons — CC, credited & licensed per image
Asteraceae family

Saltmarsh Baccharis Baccharis douglasii

Native Specialist-bee host
Late-season nectar — Flowers in a late-autumn window when few other plants in our catalog bloom — valuable late forage for pollinators (relative to our catalog's bloom coverage).

Saltmarsh Baccharis is a perennial shrub native to the lower 48 states. It blooms May – Oct. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Baccharis glutinosa is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common names saltmarsh baccharis and Douglas' falsewillow. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 9 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · May – Oct — 70 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~21 caterpillar species

Baccharis supports ~21 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a moderate genus.

Recorded feeding on Baccharis in North America, including:

Anacamptodes defectaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Anavitrinella pampinaria · Common Gray Argyrotaenia citrana · leafroller moth Argyrotaenia franciscana · Orange Tortrix Aristotelia argentifera · twirler moth Aristotelia ivae · twirler moth
+ 8 more species →
Bucculatrix dominatrix · ribbed cocoon-maker moth Bucculatrix ivella · ribbed cocoon-maker moth Bucculatrix separabilis · ribbed cocoon-maker moth Bucculatrix variabilis · ribbed cocoon-maker moth Calephelis nemesis · Fatal Metalmark Charidryas gabbii · brush-footed butterfly Chlorochlamys appellaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Choristoneura parallela · Spotted Fireworm Moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 45 bee visitors

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Baccharis is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →

45 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Saltmarsh Baccharis — the 12 most-recorded:

Apis mellifera · Honey Bee Protoxaea gloriosa · Glorious Protoxaea · ✦ specialist Halictus ligatus · sweat bee Ceratina acantha · Prickly Ceratina Agapostemon obliquus · sweat bee Bombus occidentalis · Western Bumble Bee
+ 6 more bees →
Dieunomia nevadensis · Nevada Nomia · ✦ specialist Megachile sidalceae · leafcutter bee Calliopsis squamifera · mining bee Colletes hyalinus · Hylaline Cellophane Bee Diadasia rinconis · chimney bee Hylaeus mesillae · Mesilla Masked Bee
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024. Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI → · ✦ = pollen-specialist bee (Smith et al. 2024)
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (19) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[11] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[13] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[15] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[16] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[17] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[18] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[19] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…