About ten years ago, my family and I moved into a new house. On the property were orange trees and patches
of rue, an odoriferous herb used in some cultures as a culinary herb (in
minuscule quantities), and as a good luck charm in others. The orange trees gave us delicious Valencia
oranges, and the rue, attractive, small yellow flowers in the early spring, but
they also brought us another gift: swarms of giant swallowtail and black
swallowtail butterflies. We added a lime
tree and parsley, and discovered that the giant swallowtails were also fond of
lime trees, and the black swallowtails, of the parsley as well as the rue. The abundance of these butterflies, along
with the other lepidopteran visitors to the lantana flowers that grew
everywhere around our new house, led me to an interest in butterflies in
general, and specifically, in those who shared our home.
As I learned a little about
butterflies and their habits, I came across instructions for creating a
“butterfly garden.” We were already
surrounded by butterfly-friendly plants, and I added others that butterfly
gardeners recommended. Soon pentas, butterfly
milkweed, vitex (chaste tree), buddleias (butterfly bush), and verbena joined
the lantanas, mint and sunflowers. To
make room for them, I cleared out “weeds” like wild purslane, clovers brought
by birds, globe mallow, and wild grasses.
I added “sunning rocks” and a water source for the butterflies. All of the butterfly garden instructions that
I found online emphasized the importance of planting flowers that were good
butterfly attractors; essentially abundant, accessible sources of nectar for adult
butterflies. I used guidebooks and sites
like
www.butterfliesandmoths.org to learn to identify a wide variety of
butterfly visitors.
In the course of learning to
identify various butterflies by sight, I also began to learn about their life
cycles. The led me to the realization
that a truly thriving butterfly garden meant more than just having lots of
flowers for the adult butterflies.
Hadn’t I first noticed the butterflies because of the abundance of food
in our yard for the larvae of the giant swallowtails and black
swallowtails? I slowly realized that my
butterfly garden needed not only food for the adult butterflies, but also
plants for them to lay eggs on that could serve as food for their larvae. I learned what host plants our butterfly neighbors
needed in the larval stage, and whether or not they were available
locally. The first step was to see if
they existed in our garden. Then I
walked the immediate neighborhood to see if they grew in other yards.
On occasion, I would see a
gulf fritillary on the lantanas in our yard, and I learned that their larvae
subsist solely on members of the passion vine family. I was happy to find that several of our
neighbors had stands of passion vines growing in their yards. (I would also like to plant passion vines
someday, if I can just find the right spot.)
I also realized that many of the plants the butterfly larvae in our area
needed for food—which were considered “weeds” but thrived in alleys, along
roadsides, and in vacant lots—were regularly being eradicated by the city
through the massive spraying of herbicides.
And I also learned that many of the plants I had eliminated from the
garden as “weeds” were, in fact, important host plants for butterfly
larvae. Wild purslane, for example, is a
crucial host for the larvae of our abundant variegated fritillaries, who
typically depend on violets in other biomes.
Where I live, the hot climate and alkaline soil and water make it almost
impossible to cultivate violets outdoors.
The lack of violets means that the variegated fritillary larvae in our
area have come to depend almost exclusively on wild purslane. Needless to say, I quickly reintroduced wild
purslane into the garden. (Wild
purslane, Portulaca oleracea, is also a delicious, highly nutritious salad
herb.) Globe mallow, a favorite of grey
hairstreak and painted lady larvae, was also welcomed back. (Again, it is a useful herb as well; its
roots have many medicinal applications, and its flowers make a delicious
tea. It’s a little hard to harvest, as
its leaves shed tiny, irritating hairs, but it is also delightful simply as an
ornamental.)
All of this has led me to
suggest to people who are interested in creating a butterfly garden to follow
four simple steps to insure success:
1. Familiarize yourself with
the butterflies that live in your area and learn to identify them. There are good guidebooks for this, and the
internet is also a great resource. At
www.butterfliesandmoths.org you can search for the specific butterflies found
in your state and county. Remember that
butterfly databases are based on verified sightings within a given area, so you
may occasionally see a species that is not in a database for your region. This means that you may have to do a little
extra research to identify it. But
databases are generally a good starting point.
2. After you have learned
what butterflies live in your area, learn what plants the adults and larvae use
for food, and how to identify those plants.
Take a walking tour of your neighborhood and see if those plants exist
in other people’s gardens or in the wild.
3. If good butterfly host
plants are not commonly found in the area, and if you would like to give your
local butterflies a helping hand, consider planting them in your own
garden. Of course, you will need to make
sure that the plants you choose are suited to your region. If you regularly experience hard frosts, you
don’t want to try cultivating orange trees, for example. Hardier rue is a better choice. Oranges and rue belong to the same family, and
rue is an attractive host for giant swallowtail, anise swallowtail, and black
swallowtail larvae.
4. Finally, before you pull
out weeds, learn a little about them.
Many plants considered “weeds” are actually beautiful ornamentals,
valuable medicinal or culinary herbs, and essential butterfly larvae
hosts. In many places, Virginia
snakeroot is considered to be a nuisance, to give one example, but it is also a
useful medicinal herb in experienced hands, an attractive ornamental, and an
important host for the pipevine swallowtail.
If you are worried about the “weeds” spreading and taking over,
cultivate them in pots.
Following these simple steps
will help to create a complete habitat for your butterfly neighbors and
accommodate them during their entire life cycle. In this way, you will not simply have a
butterfly garden, but a true butterfly environment.
