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iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Asteraceae family

Tree Seaside Tansy Borrichia arborescens

Native Specialist-bee host
Also known as: Tree Oxeye

Tree Seaside Tansy is a perennial shrub native to the lower 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It grows to 3 ft and blooms Jun. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Borrichia arborescens is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common name tree seaside tansy. It is native to the Yucatán Peninsula, Cuba, Jamaica, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, the Florida Keys, and other islands in the region. It is found on rocky and sandy coasts, in both beaches and marshes. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
McKenzie et al. 2025 — community-science image analysis (MIT) — Flower colour
Height
3 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Broadleaf
Flower colour
Yellow AI AI image-analysis of community-science photos (~87% expert agreement) — not a botanical record
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Rain garden / bioswale — Rated FACW on the wetland list — tolerates wet feet, so it suits the soggy zone of a rain garden or bioswale that catches and filters runoff.Open guide →
derived roles
AI = read by an AI vision model · DERIVED = a computed estimate, not a direct measurement. The “How we know this” section below details each.
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 · Jun — 10 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 Documented caterpillar host

Recorded feeding on Borrichia in North America, including:

Epiblema praesumptiosum · leafroller moth Epiblema separationis · leafroller moth
Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 5 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. Borrichia is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →

5 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Tree Seaside Tansy :

Megachile inimica · Hostile Leaf-Cutter Bee · ✦ specialist Megachile pruina · Hoary Leaf-Cutter Bee Apis mellifera · Honey Bee Megachile bahamensis · Bahama Leaf-Cutter Bee Xylocopa micans · Southern Carpenter 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)
Wildlife & visitors 3 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Tree Seaside Tansy — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

3 adult butterfly & moth species are recorded nectaring at its flowers:

Dione vanillae Polygonus leo · Hammock Skipper Ascia monuste · Great Southern White
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
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
Flower colour Derived

McKenzie et al. assigned each species a flower colour with a GPT-4V vision model over iNaturalist photos. We use the confident tier plus a separately-labelled lower-confidence top-up (mostly inconspicuous green/brown flowers), and render it as a small tint — never as an asserted fact, and kept out of the written synopsis.

Honest limits: AI image inference (~87% expert agreement on the confident tier); a decorative, confidence-tiered indicator, not a measured trait.

McKenzie, P., Berardi, A.E., Hopkins, R. (2025). flower_color_phenology (MIT).
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 (24) 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
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[08] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[09] Ecological value — GloBI · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[11] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[14] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[15] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[16] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[19] Other common names — Wikidata (CC0)
[21] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[22] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[23] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[24] 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).

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