Pollinator Conservation Resources: South Central Region

(Photo: Xerces Society / Anne Stine)

Welcome to our Pollinator Conservation Resources for the South Central Region! Here you'll find region-specific collections of publications, native seed vendors, and other resources to aid in planning, establishing, restoring, and maintaining pollinator habitat—as well as materials to help you learn about the species of invertebrates and native plants you might encounter. For more resources, see our Publications Library or learn about our Pollinator Conservation Program.

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Habitat Assessment

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Habitat Assessment Guide for Pollinators: Yards, Gardens, and Parks

Landscaping for pollinators is one of the easiest ways for urban, suburban, and rural residents to directly benefit local wildlife. Schoolyards, community gardens, back yards, corporate campuses, rain gardens, and neighborhood parks all have the potential to meet the most basic needs of pollinators, including protection from pesticides, and resources for foraging, nesting, and overwintering.

Habitat Assessment Guide for Pollinators: Farms and Agricultural Landscapes

This pollinator habitat assessment guide is designed for a single site on a farm or agricultural landscape.

Habitat Assessment Guide For Pollinators: Natural Areas and Rangelands

This pollinator habitat assessment guide is designed for natural areas and rangelands.

Habitat Assessment Guide for Beneficial Insects: Farms and Agricultural Landscapes

This beneficial insect habitat assessment guide is designed for a single site on a farm or agricultural landscape.

Pollinator Conservation and Farm System Planning

This article provides an overview of pollinators and their conservation, and describes the role of the NRCS Plant Materials Program in identifying and propagating bee-friendly wildflower species.

Establishing Native Pollinator Habitat Organically

This publication summarizes what did and didn’t work, offers tips and techniques, and makes recommendations based on our experience. Organic techniques have the potential to reduce damage to pollinators during the establishment phase by not using various herbicides and pesticides.

Estimated Costs to Establish Wildflower Plantings Using Chemical Fallow

This Xerces Society fact sheet provides a quick overview of the estimated costs of establishing wildflower habitat for pollinators on conventional farms.

Habitat Installation

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Organic Site Preparation for Wildflower Establishment

Site preparation is one of the most important and often inadequately addressed components for successfully installing pollinator habitat. These guidelines provide step-by-step instructions, helpful suggestions, and regional timelines & checklists for preparing both small and large sites.

Oklahoma Habitat Installation Guide: Tree/Shrub Establishment (612) & Hedgerow Planting (422)

These region-and state-specific guidelines provide in-depth practical guidance on how to install and maintain nectar- and pollen-rich habitat for pollinators in the form of wildflower meadow plantings/conservation cover (NRCS Conservation Practice 327) or linear rows of native flowering shrubs/hedgerow plantings (NRCS Conservation Practice 422). Seed mixes and plant recommendations for each region are included in the appendix of each guide.

Missouri Native Pollinators

This job sheet provides guidance on establishing and maintaining habit in Missouri to benefit pollinators.

Native Forb and Non-native Legume Inter-Seeding

A technical guide to establishing pollinator-friendly legumes and native wildflowers into existing grass pastures and fields.

Establishing Pollinator Meadows from Seed
Establishing wildflower habitat for pollinators is the single most effective course of action to conserve pollinators that can be taken by anyone at any scale. These guidelines provide step-by-step instructions for establishing pollinator meadows from seed in areas that range in size from a small backyard garden up to areas around an acre.

Cover Cropping for Pollinators and Beneficial Insects

This 16-page bulletin will help you use cover crops to encourage populations of pollinators and beneficial insects on your farm while you address your other resource concerns. It begins with a broad overview of pollinator and beneficial insect ecology, then describes cover crop selection and management, how to make cover crops work on your farm, and helpful and proven crop rotations. It will also touch on the limitations of cover crops and pesticide harm reduction, among other topics.

Estimated Costs to Establish Pollinator Hedgerows

This fact sheet outlines the estimated costs of establishing hedgerow habitat for pollinators. Pollinator hedgerows are diverse linear plantings of native flowering trees, shrubs, perennial wildflowers and grasses designed to provide foraging and nesting habitat for pollinators. These estimates represent average costs of establishing hedgerows from transplants, and are derived from a series of pollinator hedgerow habitat projects throughout the United States. Actual costs vary from project to project and region to region.

Plant Lists

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Buying Bee-Safe Plants

Our guide, Buying Bee-Safe Plants, covers four ways to help you find plants that are safe for bees, and includes tips and questions to use at the nursery. Check out our Bee-Safe Nursery Plants webpage for more information.

Milkweed Seed Finder

As part of our Project Milkweed, we have created this comprehensive national directory of milkweed seed vendors to help you find sources of seed. To learn more about monarch butterflies and how you can participate in conservation efforts, please visit the Xerces Society’s Monarch Butterfly Conservation page or the Monarch Joint Venture webpage.

Pollinator Plants: Southern Plains

This Xerces Society fact sheet features regionally native plants that are highly attractive to pollinators and are well-suited for small-scale plantings in gardens, urban greenspaces, and farm field borders, and on business and school campuses.

Pollinator Plants: Midwest Region

Monarch Nectar Plants: Southern Plains

This Xerces Society fact sheet features recommended native plants that are highly attractive to pollinators such as native bees, honey bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds, and are well-suited for small-scale plantings in gardens, on business and school campuses, in urban greenspaces, and in farm field borders.

Monarch Nectar Plants: Midwest

Native Plant Profiles and Lists

The Xerces Society has collaborated with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to create plant lists that are attractive to native bees, bumble bees, honey bees, and other beneficial insects, as well as plant lists with value as nesting materials for native bees. These lists can be narrowed down with additional criteria such as state, soil moisture, bloom time, and sunlight requirements.

Pollinator Plants for North-Central and West Texas and Southwestern Oklahoma

This detailed list of pollinator plant information for cropland, rangeland and wildlife areas includes the type of pollinator each plant attracts.

Native Plants for Native Pollinators in Oklahoma

This book is overflowing with information on 38 native plants and the pollinators that visit them, how to use them in the landscape, where to find them, and tips for growing them.

Pollinator Plants for Texas Conservation Practices

An overview of various native trees and shrubs of Texas, and their benefits to pollinators.

Plants for Pollinator Habitat

This poster is a publication of the East Texas Plant Materials Center, and profiles several plant species appropriate to the region.

Native Milkweeds: Pollinator Plants of the Central United States

A regional guide to the native milkweeds of North America, developed in cooperation with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Native Milkweeds of Oklahoma

This guide lists common and scientific names of Oklahoma’s native milkweeds, where they grow in the state, bloom period, and status as a host plant. Use this to help you plan your milkweed garden – picking native milkweeds that match your location and soil.

Important Plants of the Monarch Butterfly – Southern Plains

This guide from the NRCS contains three different technical support documents to assist staff in the Southern Plains region in making informed management decisions.

Roadside Habitat for Monarchs: Milkweeds of Kansas & Missouri

A diversity of milkweed species is found on roadsides, and play an important role in supporting the life cycle of monarchs. This guide can help you recognize the most common native species of milkweed on roadsides in your region.

Roadside Habitat for Monarchs: Milkweeds of Oklahoma & Texas

Habitat Management

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Maintaining Diverse Stands of Wildflowers

High quality pollinator meadows sometimes experience a decline in wildflower diversity or abundance as they age. This guide provides recommendations on how to bring declining meadows back into a high quality condition.

Collecting and Using Your Own Wildflower Seed

In this document we outline the basic steps of collecting native plant seed using readily available, non-specialized equipment, as well as tips for cleaning, storing, and sharing seed to expand pollinator habitat on farms and in our communities.

Nesting & Overwintering Habitat For Pollinators & Other Beneficial Insects

This guide focuses on a variety of natural nesting habitat features that can be readily incorporated into most landscapes. Compared to artificial nesting options such as bee blocks and bee hotels, natural nesting habitat features often better mimic the natural nest site density of insects, and also break down naturally with time, limiting disease and parasite issues.

Rangeland Management and Pollinators: A Guide for Producers in the Great Plains

These best management practices (BMPs) will help you manage your rangeland using grazing, fire, or haying, to support both livestock production and pollinator health. Well-managed rangelands are home for many species of wildlife, and your management decisions play an important role in conservation.

Roadside Best Management Practices that Benefit Pollinators

These best management practices provide concrete steps that can be taken by any roadside management agency to improve roadside vegetation for pollinators. The BMPs cover management of existing habitat, including ways to modify the use of mowing and herbicides to enhance roadsides, and methods to incorporate native plants and pollinator habitat into the design of new roadsides.

Roadside Habitat For Monarchs: Monarch Butterflies, Weeds, and Herbicides

Roadsides provide more than just milkweed. They can also provide diverse nectar sources to feed adult monarchs and other pollinators—but ensuring that roadsides can continue to provide the best habitat requires some thought and care. This guide highlights best management practices to reduce the impacts of herbicides on monarchs.

Farming with Soil Life: A Handbook for Supporting Soil Invertebrates and Soil Health on Farms

This guide focuses on the diverse, often overlooked, and essential living species that we know best: the major invertebrates (macrofauna and mesofauna) found in temperate agricultural soils. There is a focus on North America in the groups of organisms and the soil health practices that are covered, but many groups are present in these soil types around the world, and the same management principles apply. Larger soil animals, such as ground beetles, woodlice, and springtails, and their many companions, have received less attention than soil microbes in recent years.

Pesticide Protection

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Guidance to Protect Habitat from Pesticide Contamination: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Pollinator Habitat

This Xerces Society guidance document was designed to help growers, land managers, and others safeguard pollinator habitat from harmful pesticide contamination. It includes information on selecting habitat sites, as well as ways to maintain clean habitat by limiting and carefully managing pesticide use.

Smarter Pest Management: Protecting Pollinators at Home

Most of North America’s native bee species only forage over a distance of a few hundred yards, so with a little planning, your yard can provide a safe space for bees and other pollinators to thrive. All you need to give them are flowering plants throughout the growing season, undisturbed places to nest, and protection from pesticides. This Xerces Society guide will help you with the last item, managing yard pests in a pollinator-friendly way.

Smarter Pest Management: Pollinator Protection for Cities and Campuses

This Xerces Society fact sheet introduces to city and campus land managers the concept of integrated pest management (IPM), a system that emphasizes prevention first and seeks to eliminate the underlying causes of plant diseases, weeds, and insect problems rather than relying on routine use of pesticides.

Buying Bee-Safe Plants
Creating a welcoming home for local pollinators in your home garden or city park habitat is reason enough to choose plants free from harmful pesticide residues. Nurseries are more likely to make investments in pollinator-friendly production if their customers make it clear this is what they want. Our guide, Buying Bee-Safe Plants, covers four ways to help you find plants that are safe for bees, and includes tips and questions to use at the nursery.

Offering Bee-Safe Plants: A Guide for Nurseries

Three core elements of pollinator-friendly growing include using non-chemical methods to prevent and manage pests, monitoring of pest pressure, and limiting risk to pollinators if pesticides are used. These concepts are rooted in integrated pest management and are familiar to most growers. Offering Bee-Safe Nursery Plants: A Guide for Nurseries explains these concepts further and was created for wholesalers and retailers to explore, encourage, and implement pollinator friendly pest-management in the nursery business.

Protecting Pollinators from Pesticides: Fungicide Impacts on Pollinators

From large farms to small backyard gardens, many people use fungicides to control plant pathogens. While insecticides have long been recognized as a threat to bees and other beneficial insects, fungicides have generally been assumed to be relatively harmless. Though most fungicide exposures won’t kill a bee immediately, a growing body of research suggests that some fungicides can cause subtle yet significant harm. This Xerces Society fact sheet delves into how these impacts on pollinators occur, and offers mitigation measures and alternative pest management strategies.

How to Reduce Bee Poisoning from Pesticides

This detailed guide, produced jointly by the extension services of Oregon State University, Washington State University, and the University of Idaho, offers guidance on how to select and apply insecticides. Extensive tables list the toxicity to bees of dozens of chemicals and how long after application they remain hazardous to bees in the field.

Protecting Bees from Neonicotinoids in Your Garden

Neonicotinoids are a group of insecticides that are used widely on farms, as well as around our homes, schools, and city landscapes. This Xerces Society brochure explains why they are a risk to bees, gives examples of neonicotinoid garden products, and gives some simple tips for protecting bees from these insecticides.

How Neonicotinoids Can Kill Bees: The Science Behind the Role These Insecticides Play in Harming Bees

In this Xerces Society report, we present an overview of research that clearly documents neonicotinoid impacts on bees. The report also covers what can be inferred from existing research, and identifies knowledge gaps that will need to be filled to allow for better-informed decisions about the future use and regulation of these chemicals.

Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Effects of Neonicotinoid Insecticides on Agriculturally Important Beneficial Insects

This Xerces Society report details potential negative impacts of neonicotinoid insecticides on important beneficial insects. It also makes recommendations on how we can better protect important beneficials like beetles and wasps.

Organic Pesticides: Minimizing Risks to Pollinators and Beneficial Insects

These Xerces Society guidelines provide a brief overview of how to select and apply pesticides for organic farm operations while minimizing pollinator mortality. Many of the practices outlined here for protecting pollinators also can help to protect beneficial insects such as parasitoid wasps and flies; predaceous wasps, flies, and beetles; ambush and assassin bugs; lacewings; and others. The presence of these insects can further reduce pest pressure and the need for chemical treatments.

Common Organic-Allowed Pesticides: A Comparative Overview

Intended as a companion document to Organic Pesticides: Minimizing Risks to Pollinators and Beneficial Insects, this fact sheet is intended to be a quick reference to help you select and use organically-approved pesticides with the least impact on bees and other beneficial insects.

Supporting Ecologically Sound Mosquito Management: Protecting Pollinators from Pesticides

This Xerces Society fact sheet provides a brief overview of mosquito management methods that protect both people and pollinators, plus two case studies in effective mosquito management.

IPI Database

The IPI database contains summaries of research articles on pesticides, their effects on invertebrates, and pesticide movement in the environment. Articles have been reviewed and summarized to highlight key findings by Xerces Society staff.

Preventing or Mitigating Potential Negative Impacts of Pesticides on Pollinators Using Integrated Pest Management and Other Conservation Practices

Agronomy Technical Note No. 9.

Identification & Monitoring Resources

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Texas Bumble Bees

Resources regarding native bees of Texas, with identification guidance, natural history, and species distribution information.

Bumble Bees of the Eastern United States

This field guide was produced by the USDA Forest Service and the Pollinator Partnership. The Guide covers the most commonly encountered bumble bees of the Eastern United States. Each bee species has information on preferred food plants, nesting biology, seasonal activity patterns, identification guidelines, and distribution maps.

Bumble Bees of the Western United States

This field guide was produced by the USDA Forest Service and the Pollinator Partnership. The Guide covers the most commonly encountered bumble bees of the Western United States. Each bee species has information on preferred food plants, nesting biology, seasonal activity patterns, identification guidelines, and distribution maps.

Native Seed & Plant Vendors

Vendors

Buying Bee-Safe Plants

Milkweed Seed Finder

Bamert Seed Co. , Muleshoe, TX
Bamert Seed Co. offers native seed of prairie grasses and fobs.

Browning Seed, Inc. , Plainview, TX
Browning Seed, Inc. provides grasses and some forbs native to the Midwest.

Buchanan’s Native Plants, Houston, TX
Buchanan’s Native Plants is a nursery that sells Texas native plants.

Bustani Plant Farm , Stillwater, OK
Bustani Plant Farm offers a selection of Oklahoma native transplants.

De Lange Seed, Inc. , Girard, KS
De Lange Seed sells wildflower and grass seeds native to Kansas.

Douglas King Seeds , San Antonio, TX
Douglas King Seeds specializes in native grass seeds and seed mixes.

Easy Wildflowers, Willow Springs, MO
Easy Wildflowers provides potted native wildflower plants from Missouri.

Feyh Farm Seed , Alma, KS
Feyh Farm Seed provides native grasses and wildflower seeds for wholesale and retail.

Grasslander, Hennessey, OK
Grasslander offers seeds and rhizomes of prairie species, and wetland and upland seed mixtures and prairie seed planting equipment.

Grogg’s Green Barn , Tulsa, OK
Grogg’s Green Barn carries organic and non-GMO plants including Oklahoma natives.

Hamilton Native Outpost, Elk Creek, MO
Hamilton Native Outpost produces local eco-type wildflower and prairie grass seed for central Missouri. The company offers prepared seed mixes, and tours and classes for the public.

Heep’s Native Plant Nursery, Harlingen, TX
Heep’s Native Plant Nursery specializes in native shrubs, vines, grasses and groundcovers.

Holland Wildflower Farm, Elkins, AR
An online seed store, Holland Wildflower Farm offers wildflower seeds and seed mixes appropriate for Arkansas.

Johnston Seed Co. , Enid, OK
Johnston provides Oklahoma wildflower and grass seeds and seed mixes.

Kansas Native Plants , Topeka, KS
Kansas Native Plants carries seeds of native wildflowers, grasses, trees and shrubs.

Kaw River Restoration Nurseries, Eudora, KS
Kaw River supplies local ecotype native seed and plants to western Missouri and east-central Kansas.

Missouri Wildflowers Nursery, Jefferson City, MO
Missouri Wildflowers Nursery sells Missouri ecotype nursery propagated plants and both wild harvested and nursery grown seeds.

Native American Seed, Junction, TX
Native American Seed offers 100% native and locally harvested wildflower and grass seeds as well as the bare root stock of many perennials.

Natives of Texas, Kerrville, TX
Natives of Texas deal exclusively in plants native to central Texas, including perennials, shrubs, and trees.

Pine Ridge Gardens, London, AR
Pine Ridge is a mail order nursery with a large diversity of native wildflower, grass, tree and shrub species available in pots.

Prairie Pride Plants , Wichita, KS
Prairie Pride Plants provides native plants for gardening and landscaping.

Pure Air Natives, Wentzville, MO
Pure Air Natives offers habitat restoration, custom pure live seed mixes, and live native plants for agricultural landscapes and prairie restoration. We believe that every plant we put in the ground is an improvement to our environment.

Sharp Bros. Seed Co. , Greely, CO and Healy, KS
Sharp Bros. Seed Co. offers Midwest native grass and wildflower seeds.

Star Seed , Osborne, KS
Star Seed provides seeds of wildflowers and grasses native to Kansas.

Sunshine Nursery, Clinton, OK
Sunshine Nursery is a small retail nursery with a wide variety of native trees, shrubs, and perennial plants.

Turner Seed, Breckenridge, TX
Turner provides native grass and wildflower seeds, wholesale and retail.

Vinland Valley Nursery , Baldwin City, KS
Vinland Valley Nursery sells organic plants including a selection of natives.

Western Native Seeds , Coaldale, CO
Western Native Seed specializes in seeds of plants which are native to the Rocky Mountains, western Great Plains, and adjacent areas.

Wildseed Farms, Inc. , Fredericksburg, TX
Wildseed offers regional wildflower mixtures and a selection of native grasses.

Seed Mixes

Buying Bee-Safe Plants

Bee Happy Native Seed Mix for the South-Central U.S.

From Native American Seed in Junction, Texas, this mix includes a diversity of annual and perennial native wildflowers that provide quality sources of nectar and pollen for pollinators. This mix is appropriate for habitat restoration in southern Arizona and New Mexico, eastern Colorado, Kansas, southern Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, northern Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana, and the Southeastern coastal plain.

High Plains Native Seed Mix

This mix produced by Applewood Seed Company includes high quality native wildflowers that attract and support pollinators. Two or more species of native bunch grass are also included, to provide nesting habitat for bumble bees and other beneficial insects. This mix is appropriate for habitat restoration at elevations below 6,000 feet in southeastern Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota, western Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, eastern New Mexico, western Oklahoma and northwestern Texas.

Native Milkweeds

The Xerces Society launched Project Milkweed, with support from the Monarch Joint Venture, a USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Conservation Innovation Grant, and private foundations, to address the scarcity of milkweed seed in many regions of the United States.

Bumble Bee Watch

Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees. Everyone is invited to contribute to this important community science effort. Have fun while learning more about bumble bees and the vital role they play in our environment!

Missouri Bumble Bee Atlas

The Missouri Bumble Bee Atlas is a statewide community science project aimed at tracking and conserving Missouri's native bumble bees.

Bee Better Certified

Bee Better Certified™ partners with farmers and food companies to conserve bees and other pollinators in agricultural lands. The Bee Better Certified seal identifies and celebrates farmers and businesses that adopt farm management practices that support pollinators, and gives consumers confidence that their purchasing decisions benefit pollinators and the farmers working to protect them.

Bee City & Bee Campus USA

The Bee City & Bee Campus USA programs endorse a set of commitments for creating sustainable habitats for native pollinators, which are vital to feeding the planet. Learn more how to make your town or campus better for bees today!