A giclee print on textured watercolor paper. The paper measures 8x10” for easy framing and the print area is 5x7”.

The Mohave Ghost Flower, Mohavea confertiflora, is a lovely ethereal desert flower that doesn’t produce any nectar of its own. It does, however, mimic another flower, the Desert Blazing Star, Mentzelia involucrata, which produces sweet nectar that attracts female Xeralictus bees, its main pollinator. The female bees use the nectar to take back to their nests and feed their young, and transfer pollen from one flower to another while retrieving nectar. The Ghost Flower - it not only mimics the Blazing Star, it also has red spots on its petals which are thought to actually mimic the appearance of a female Xeralictus bee visiting the flower. Male bees see this flower and approach, hoping to mate! But instead they just bumble around, pick up some pollen (there’s no nectar for them to eat, and they don’t even want it anyway), and continue on their way unsatisfied, until they are tricked into visiting another Ghost Flower, and pollination occurs. In this way, the Ghost Flower takes advantage of the male Xeralictus bees, capitalizing off the symbiotic pollination relationship of the female bee with the Blazing Star.

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