Everyone, no matter what age, is enticed and enchanted by the flying jewels of the garden, the butterflies. Planting a butterfly garden will awaken a sense of wonder in yourself as well as your children or grandchildren. Butterflies are magical and also so common that they are the ideal creatures to capture the imagination and start a life-long relationship with nature. Anyone can be successful in planting a garden to attract butterflies. Butterflies need two types of plants to fulfill their destiny, to lay eggs, so there is a next generation. NECTARING PLANTS: The first plant they need is flowering annuals, perennials, bushes or trees. Flowers provide nectar. Nectar to butterflies is like gasoline for cars. Butterflies need nectar to supply energy so they can fly, find a mate and if a female, lay her eggs. All flowering plants have nectar. Nectar, which is composed of water and about 20% sugar, is nature’s way of attracting insects to flowers so they can be pollinated. The colors and perfume of flowers advertise that nectar is available. Sugar is manufactured by the plant during photosynthesis. The sugar content varies slightly in different flowers so all insects including the butterfly, soon figure out and remember what plants have the highest content of sugar in their nectar. NECTAR PLANT CHOICES: You can easily pick and choose from many native perennials and annuals to add to your garden to satisfy the butterfly’s need for nectar. A good starter list for annuals, (annuals are not native plants), with a high sugar content in their nectar includes: snapdragons, orange marigolds, red salvia, orange lantana, daisies, cosmos, petunias, nasturtiums and zinnias. A native perennials list with a high sugar content in their nectar includes: phlox, yarrow, black-eyed susan, lavender, liatris, verbena, coneflower, beer balm, hyssop, goldenrod, asters and rue to name a few. If you wish to incorporate bushes with high nectar content consider: Sweet Pepperbush, Butterfly Bush, Ironweed and Buttonbush. As an additional benefit, your garden full of nectaring plants, will also attract native bees and other pollinators. HOSTS OR LARVAL PLANTS: Now that you have provided fuel for your butterflies, all you have to do is add hosts plants to your butterfly garden. They are the secret to a successful butterfly garden. Hosts plants are native plants that butterflies require to lay their eggs on. The caterpillar is hatched from the egg. By eating the leaves of hosts plants caterpillars quickly grow and develop. However each butterfly species needs a specific host plant with which it has specifically co-evolved. Why? All plants defend themselves by manufacturing toxic chemicals in their leaves to keep animals and insects from eating them. Each butterfly species, over a long evolutionary time period, has figured out how not to be harmed by the chemicals of at least one plant. And this plant becomes their host plant, a plant that a caterpillar can eat. HOST PLANT CHOICES: Make a list of the butterflies that live in your area that you would like to attract to your garden. Then, find out their host plant. Here is a short list of butterfly species and the host plants with which they have co-evolved: Monarchs – milkweed plants, Swallowtails – dill, parsley and rue, Painted Ladies – asters, ironweed, mallows, Blue Azures – lupines, Cabbage Whites – any vegetable in the cabbage family, Fritillaries – violets, Silver Spotted Skippers- cone flowers. TREES AS HOST PLANTS: Some butterflies have evolved with trees as their host plant. Here are a few examples: The Mourning Cloak – willow trees. The Viceroy and Hairstreaks - willow trees, Red-Spotted Purple – apple trees, Anglewings – elm trees, White Admiral –hawthorns, Spicebush Swallowtail –spicebush tree. For those of you who love moths: The Sphinx Moth (also called the hummingbird moth) – Cherry trees, Luna Moth – Hickory trees. A HEADS UP: I have seen many gardeners, after designing and implementing a beautiful butterfly garden, add a bird feeder to their arrangement. With this one action they have changed their butterfly garden into a bird garden. Birds eat insects and butterflies are insects! Place your bird feeder far away from your butterfly garden. WATER: All species on this planet need water! Butterflies love water but must keep their legs dry. Their legs have small hooks on them so they can pierce the outer layer of a leaf. Then through a quick chemical analysis, they can tell instantly if the plant is the host plant they are looking for to lay their eggs on. Thus, they must keep their legs dry. A trick that I use is to fill a bird bath with colorful marbles or small stones and add water. As long as the stones or marbles on the top are above the water, they will give the butterfly a dry place to land on. Butterflies have extremely long tongues that they keep rolled up in their mouths and only use when gathering nectar or sipping water. On top of the dry stones/marbles, they can shoot their tongues down between the crevices and get the water they need while still keeping their legs dry. Next time you see a butterfly gathering nectar or sipping water, count its six legs. If you count seven you know that you are seeing its tongue. They look very similar! RECAP: Step one: plant perennial and annual flowering plants. Step two: Plant native host plants. Now you will not only have a beautiful and easy to care for nature garden but you have created a nursery for caterpillars that will soon develop into the next generation of butterflies! Mother Nature will thank you for becoming an agent in making positive and sustainable environmental choices in your own backyard. LEPIDOPTERA: Butterflies and moths are insects in the order Lepidoptera (from Greek ‘lepis’ meaning scale and Greek ‘ptera’ meaning wing). There are 125,000 species of moths and 14,500 species of butterflies in this order. Moths evolved first around 190 million years ago which explains why there are so many more species. These delicate flying insects sought protection by flying, mating and gathering nectar only at night. Butterflies, which descended from moths, made their entrance only when flowers evolved around 120 – 140 million years ago. They are day-time moths! They have many forms of protection to allow them to fly and gather nectar and mate during the day. Sometimes their color offers them camouflage. However, their major source of protection is that their wings are made of thousands of individual scales all of which are capable of easily detaching if a bird grabs onto them. This simple adaption allows them to fly off while the bird is left with only a beak full of scales. The next time you see a butterfly, take a close look at its wings. Do you see any parts missing? METAMORPHOSIS: (from Greek ‘meta’ meaning transforming, and “morphe” meaning shape) Moths and butterflies are insects that undergo, what is termed, true metamorphosis because it takes place in four stages. First stage, the EGG -Eggs are laid on host plants by the adult female butterfly. They are a little larger than the size of a period at the end of this sentence. They are usually laid on the underside of the leaf for protection. Second stage, the CATERPILLAR – (This is sometimes called the LARVAL stage) – This is the feeding stage. When emerging from the egg, the caterpillar will be very small, about ¼”. The caterpillar is a 24 hour a day eating machine and will quickly grow to around 2 ½”. It takes about 4-5 different stages to get to the mature size. Each time the caterpillar outgrows its skin, it splits it in two by gulping air into its lungs, and emerges its new larger size. It then eats its old skin, a valuable source of protein. After repeating this action 4-5 times it will reach its full growth. This takes a couple of weeks to complete. Hormones then tell the caterpillar to stop eating and to look for a good leaf to attach itself to for the next stage. Third stage, the PUPA - (called a COCOON for moths and a CHRYSALIS for butterflies) – This is the transition stage. In the pupa the structure of the caterpillar completely breaks down and the adult structure forms. Special cells that were present in the caterpillar grow rapidly and become legs, eyes, wings and other parts of the adult butterfly or moth. Depending on the species of moth or butterfly this stage can last from a few weeks to two years. Forth Stage, the ADULT - This is the reproductive stage. The butterfly and the moth actively search for mates. Once the female is fertilized by the male she starts laying hundreds of eggs, one at a time, usually on the underside of a leaf of a host plant so that they are not easily spotted and eaten by predatory insects. After laying their eggs, except for a few exceptions, (notably the Monarch), butterflies and moths die. They have completed their mission to ensure the next generation. A NOTE OF CAUTION: Get to know the word NEONICOTINOIDS also called Neonics. Neonics are a class of insecticides chemically similar to nicotine. They are often added to the soil of potted plants to kill insects. They are harmful to the nervous system of all insects. Once added to the soil they are quickly ingested by plants. Scientist do not now how many years the neonics remain in the soil, in the plant, in their nectar and leaves. Before buying any plant at a garden shop or store, please ask them if their plants have neonics. If they do, ask them to buy plants that don’t have neonics added to them or find another source that doesn’t use them. After all the hard work you have done in your garden to support butterflies, bees and beneficial insects, you don’t want to poison them.
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AuthorConsultant, designer and educator transforming commercial and residential landscapes sustainably Archives
March 2023
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