But Glover’s team showed that bumblebees can see the pattern no matter the background, and in lab conditions, they find flowers more quickly if they have a blue halo. “When the same trait ...

A layer of mulch will help keep their roots moist, but not waterlogged, which is a killer for these blue beauties. As with other flowers you might want to add to your shady garden, gentians are a ...

We also discovered that the scarcity of blue flowers is partly due to the limits of our own eyes. From a bee’s perspective, attractive bluish flowers are much more common. Today many blues are ...

What it is: Lily-of-the-Nile is a tough, long-blooming, perennial blue flower that’s very common in its native South Africa and warm-weather parts of the U.S., but it’s always been just out of ...