ABSTRACT
There are benefits to and costs for everything. Firebush in the major part of its range (the Bahamas, West Indies, from southern Mexico to Peru and Paraguay) depends largely on hummingbirds for pollination. Southern Florida has no resident hummingbirds, and only some of the firebush plants can be pollinated by the overwintering winged jewels, the ruby-throat (Archilochus colubris). Instead, the plants “use” butterflies as alternate pollen vectors. I suspect that many of the plants are also facultatively self-pollinating (autogamous), but I have seen no studies on that topic.
