Go ahead-indulge your passions for gardening and for beautiful butterflies. Your passions may turn out to have beneficial implications for all of us as you create new populations of butterflies.
No matter how small your garden, you will be able to grow some plants that will benefit butterflies. A single butterfly bush will attract many of the butterflies already present in your area. A few parsley plants may well be found by elegant female black swallowtails.
Most people are interested in butterfly gardening to create movement and drama in their gardens and to experience the beauty of butterflies at home. Miriam Rothschild has described butterflies as "dream flowers- childhood dreams-which have broken loose from their stalks and escaped into the sunshine." An analogous desire leads people to feed birds in winter or hummingbirds in the summer. Done correctly, butterfly gardening can increase the populations of butterflies.
The key here is to do real butterfly gardening. When you create a garden, you usually grow plants. When you butterfly-garden you should aspire to grow butterflies! How do you do this? You use plants that are food plants for butterfly caterpillars. In dealing with butterflies, an extremely important point to keep in mind is that caterpillars and adult butterflies use two very different types of food and that both are absolutely necessary to create a healthy population of butterflies. It is tempting to focus almost exclusively on food for adult butterflies (primarily nectar from flowers)-because you love both flowers and adult butterflies. But, without food for the caterpillars, you won't have any adult butterflies to feed. Let's start with how you feed caterpillars.
Almost all butterfly caterpillars eat plants. As a gardener, your natural reflex may have been to kill (or at least remove) anything you've found eating your plants. But, unlike many moth caterpillars, butterfly caterpillars generally aren't real pests of the plants they eat in nature. Tiger swallowtail caterpillars feeding on wild cherry leaves, or viceroy caterpillars feeding on willows, or monarch caterpillars feeding on a stand of milkweed-these rarely cause any lasting harm. In addition, because butterfly caterpillars eat only special groups of plants, you don't have to worry about their moving on to other plants. They will definitely turn up their noses at your roses, rhododendrons, and rosemary.
So when you add special plants that you hope will result in a population of butterflies, remember to enjoy the caterpillars you find on these plants-soon they will become the butterflies you desire. Besides, on close inspection you'll probably find that many of the caterpillars are fascinating and beautiful in their own right.
A list of some plants that serve as caterpillar food plants is on page 18. The closer your garden is to an already existing population of butterflies, the more likely that they will find and use the special plants in your garden.
Now that you have created new butterflies by providing caterpillar food plants, you'll want to consider the care and well-being of the adults.
Luckily for all of us, the number one food for adult butterflies is nectar from flowers. And, there's no law that says that the flowers can't be beautiful. With flowers as butterfly nectar sources, you have many options. You can use some of the many standard horticultural plants that have excellent butterfly flowers (see the table below). Or, you can concentrate on using plants native to your area.
Butterfly gardening with standard horticultural plants is easier for a number of reasons. First, these plants are readily available throughout the country. Most of us live within easy distance of a nursery having a good selection of garden plants. If you don't, numerous mail-order nurseries will fill the void. Second, horticultural plants are more standardized, and the same plants can be recommended for use over much of the continent.
In contrast, native plants are often more difficult to obtain. Your local nursery is not likely to carry them. (See below for ways to obtain native plants). But, while using native plants may be more of a challenge, ultimately it is the more satisfying approach.
You will need to find specialty nurseries to obtain these species commercially, or contact native plant societies with the hope of finding native plant aficionados who will help you. Digging plants from natural habitats is not recommended, for many reasons:
It is illegal is some areas, harms the environment, and often results in failure because many of these plants are extremely difficult to transplant.
The more complex your garden becomes, the more attractive it is likely to be to butterflies. Because different butterflies use different caterpillar food plants, you'll want numbers of these.
Different butterflies also prefer different nectar sources. Some prefer larger flowers; many prefer smaller flowers. Skippers seem to be especially drawn to purple flowers, while many hairstreaks like white flowers. And, because butterflies fly from early spring to late fall, you'll want a procession of flowers for use as butterfly feeding stations throughout the year.
In addition, many, many butterfly species feed on small, inconspicuous plants that most gardeners would regard as "weeds." If possible, allow a few areas of your garden, perhaps areas that are not easily seen, to become weedy. You'll be amazed by the beautiful butterflies that these areas will export to your more formal garden!
Tortoiseshells, anglewings, many satyrs, and others rarely come to flowers. These butterflies get nourishment as adults from tree sap, or by visiting rotting fruit and other decaying organic matter. You can attract these butterflies to your garden by feeding them "mung."
What is mung? I'm not sure, but here is Don Riepe's mung "recipe."
Start with a base of molasses. Add old bananas (you can sometimes get these free from supermarkets) or other rotting fruit. Add enough beer to make the mixture easily spreadable. Leave in a covered container for a few days. Spread on a tree limb, or create your own feeding station and spread the mung on a portion of it.
As we saw in the behavior section, many butterflies like to gather at damp sand or gravel. You may already have an area that is naturally wet. Or you can easily create a small wet area by burying a bucket or container filled with sand, adding water as necessary.
Since butterflies like to warm themselves in the sun, why not help them by providing some decorative rocks in sunny areas? In addition to providing a convenient basking spot, the rocks retain heat from the sun's rays, further aiding the butterfly in its search for warmth.
Although an army of butterfly gardeners cannot quite compensate for the extensive loss of butterfly habitats, we can definitely have a positive effect. With suburbia covering an ever greater percentage of the land, a transition from lawns and exotic plants to a more butterfly-friendly environment will keep at least some species from declining precipitously. In fact, I predict that a number of butterfly species will increase in number and expand their ranges due to the efforts of butterfly gardeners.
It is easy to help our most famous butterfly, the monarch- just plant some milkweed. At the same time you'll be helping yourself, because many of the milkweeds are beautiful garden plants. An incredible bonus is that the milkweed flowers are exceptionally attractive to butterflies. Monarch caterpillars like to dine on almost any species of milkweed. As gardeners throughout North America plant milkweeds in their gardens, the numbers of monarchs should increase.
A butterfly that will become more common, and whose range will increase over the next 15 years, is the pipevine swallowtail. This species is presently found throughout much of the East (most common in the Southeast), sporadically in the Southwest, and in northern California. The caterpillars of these tremulous swallowtails with iridescent blue hind wings feed on Aristolochia vines. These plants were garden favorites in Victorian times but have since fallen out of favor. Butterfly gardening will bring them back!
My last prediction is for an increase in gulf fritillaries. This spangled dazzler cannot survive cold winters and so is found year-round in only the very warmest parts of the United States. Each summer its population grows, and it is becoming common throughout much of the South. Butterfly gardeners will help this northward spread by planting oodles of passion-vines, the gulf fritillary caterpillar's food plant.
Asters (Aster)
•Heath aster (A. ericoides)*
•New England aster (A. novae-angliae)
•Smooth aster (A. laevis)
Bee balm (Monarda)
•Bee balm (M. didyma)*
•Wild bergamot (A. fistulosa)
Spanish needles (Bidens)
•B. lemmoni
•Smooth bur-marigold (B. laevis)
Blazingstars (Liatris)
Buckwheats (Eriogonum)
•California buckwheat (E. fasciculatum)*
•Sulphur flower (E. umbellatum)* - In the West, a great garden plant, nectar source, and caterpillar food plant.
Wild lilac (Ceanothus)
•New Jersey tea (C. americanus) For the East.
•Desert buckbrush (C. fendleri) and others for the West.*
Coneflowers (Echinacea)
•Purple coneflower (E. purpurea)*
•Pale purple coneflower (E. pallida)
Dogbanes (Apocynum)
•Spreading dogbane (A. androsaemifolium)
•Indian hemp (A. cannabinum)
Thoroughworts (Eupatorium)
•Boneset (E. perfoliatum)
•Joe pye weed (E. maculatum, et al.)
•E. odoratum - A sensational plant for butterflies in southern Texas.
Fogfruit (Lippia nodiflora) - A good groundcover, a good nectar source for small butterflies, and the food plant for Phaon crescent. Grows in most of the southern U.S.
Forget-me-nots (Myosotis)*
Wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) - Beautiful and an excellent spring nectar source.
Goldenrods (Solidago)
Groundsel (Senecio)
•Willow groundsel (S. salignus)
Golden fleece (Ericameria arborescens)
Jupiter's beard (Centranthus ruber)
Lantana (Lantana)
•Bush lantana (L. camara)* - Excellent in the Southwest.
•Trailing lantana (L. montevidensis)
Milkweeds (Asclepias)
•Butterfly weed (A. tuberosa)* - Belongs in most butterfly gardens.
•Bloodflower (A. curassavica)* - Grows in Florida, Texas, and southern California.
•Swamp milkweed (A. incarnata)
•Common milkweed (A. syriaca)
•Purple milkweed (A. purpurascens) - A beautiful milkweed, worth trying.
Mountain-mints (Pycnanthemum)
Ox-eye daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum)
Violets (Viola)
•Birdfoot violet (V. pedata)
*Indicates that this plant species is often available in the horticulture trade.
Copyright © 2001 Bird Watcher's Digest. All rights reserved.
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