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Asteraceae family

Jones' Tidytips Layia jonesii

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

Jones' Tidytips is an annual wildflower native to the lower 48 states. It blooms Mar – May. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

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
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Lifespan
Annual
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb 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 · Mar – May — 24 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 Layia in North America, including:

Heliothodes diminutivus · owlet moth
Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 9 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. Layia is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →

9 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Jones' Tidytips :

Agapostemon texanus · Texas Agapostemon Andrena baeriae · mining bee Andrena duboisi · mining bee · ✦ specialist Andrena nigroclypeata · mining bee Andrena pensilis · mining bee Andrena pulverea · mining bee
+ 3 more bees →
Andrena subchalybea · mining bee · ✦ specialist Osmia montana · mason bee · ✦ specialist Osmia nemoris · mason 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.
Sources for this entry (15) 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] Ecological value — GloBI · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[09] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[12] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[13] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[14] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[15] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
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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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