Annual plants complete their life cycle within a single growing season. These temporary floral sources offer a perfect way to provide continuous, high-energy fuel for passing hummingbirds throughout the warmer months. These tiny, high-metabolism birds require a constant supply of nectar to power their rapid wingbeats and active lifestyles. Selecting annuals with specific floral attributes ensures a reliable, seasonal food source that attracts and sustains these fliers.
Key Characteristics Hummingbirds Seek
Hummingbirds possess sensory adaptations that guide them to the best nectar sources. Unlike many insects, these birds have a fourth type of cone cell in their eyes, allowing them to perceive light in the ultraviolet (UV) range. This superior color vision means they can see colors humans cannot, including non-spectral combinations like UV-plus-red or UV-plus-green.
Their visual preference is strongly guided by long-wavelength colors such as red, orange, and hot pink, which stand out sharply against green foliage. The flowers they favor are elongated and tubular, a shape perfectly adapted to their long, slender bills and tongues. This structure effectively excludes larger insects like bees from accessing the nectar, ensuring the supply remains available primarily for the hummingbird pollinator. Furthermore, many hummingbird-pollinated flowers lack a strong scent, as the birds rely on sight rather than smell to locate their food.
Top Annuals for Hummingbird Gardens
Annual species effective at drawing hummingbirds have ideal structure and color. Scarlet Sage, or Salvia coccinea, is a prime example, offering dense spikes of vibrant red, tubular flowers. Specific cultivars, such as ‘Summer Jewel Red’ or ‘Lady in Red,’ are bred for extended bloom time and feature the narrow, elongated shape that accommodates a hummingbird’s feeding style.
The common Petunia is another excellent choice, particularly the single-flowered varieties with a pronounced trumpet shape. Cultivars like ‘Surfinia Deep Red’ or ‘African Sunset’ provide the necessary bright red and orange hues with a deep tube that holds a substantial nectar reward. Heirloom and hybrid petunias with a tubular characteristic are preferred.
Fuchsia, often grown as a hanging basket annual, features delicate, pendulous flowers perfectly suited for a hovering bird. The blossoms are frequently bi-colored in combinations of red, pink, and purple. They hang downward, guiding the hummingbird to the tubular inner corolla, which is ideal for the bird’s acrobatic feeding maneuvers.
Calibrachoa, or Million Bells, provides a profusion of small, trumpet-shaped blooms all season long. While smaller than petunias, their sheer abundance and continuous flowering in colors like ‘Million Bells Terra Cotta’ (orange) or deep reds create a visible and reliable food source. Their trailing habit makes them excellent choices for containers and window boxes, placing the nectar within easy reach.
Maximizing Nectar Production and Attraction
To ensure these annuals provide a continuous nectar supply, specific gardening practices are beneficial. Mass planting, which involves clustering several plants of the same variety, is an effective technique. This creates a large, highly visible color patch that signals a concentrated food source, making it more efficient for a hummingbird to forage.
Adequate sun exposure is another important factor, as the energy plants use to produce sugars in their nectar comes directly from photosynthesis. Most hummingbird annuals perform best in full sun, which encourages higher sugar concentration in the nectar and a greater number of blooms. Regular and consistent watering is also necessary, as nectar is a watery solution secreted by glands called nectaries.
The maintenance practice of deadheading, or removing spent blooms, is necessary for many annuals to prolong the flowering period. Preventing the plant from setting seed redirects its energy into producing new flowers and more nectar throughout the season until the first hard frost.