A dataset of nectar sugar production for flowering plants found in urban greenspaces

Nectar and pollen are floral resources that provide food for insect
pollinators, so quantifying their supplies can help us to understand and
mitigate pollinator declines. However, most existing datasets of floral
resource measurements focus on native plants found in rural landscapes, so
cannot be used effectively for estimating supplies in urban green spaces,
where non-native ornamental plants often predominate. We sampled floral
nectar sugar in 225 plant taxa found in UK residential gardens and other
urban green spaces, focussing on the most common species. The vast
majority (94%) of our sampled taxa are non-native, filling an important
research gap and ensuring these data are also relevant outside of the UK.
Our dataset includes values of daily nectar sugar production for all 225
taxa and nectar sugar concentration for around half (102) of those
sampled. Nectar extraction was conducted according to published methods,
ensuring our values can be combined with other datasets. We anticipate
that the two main uses of these data are (1) to estimate the nectar
production of habitats and landscapes, and (2) to identify high-nectar
plants of conservation importance. To increase the utility of our data we
provide guidance for scaling nectar values up from single flowers to
floral units, as is commonly done in field studies.