Bringing Butterflies Home was originally published in the BFEC newsletter, Vol. 14/No. 2, Spring 2010.
Picture butterflies weightlessly fluttering around you as they wander towards brilliant flowers. They land delicately and slowly open and close their wings, basking in the sun along with their human admirers.
The languid moment is disrupted, to your amazement, as two butterflies pursue each other in a dizzying upward spiral, 10, 15, 20 feet in the air, until they just as suddenly stop and drift to the ground.
While the BFEC Wildlife Garden has been a host to these scenes for over ten years, we’d like to invite you to try it at home! It’s easier than you might think, and starts with a few of the gardening techniques we’ve shared here.
Add color to your landscape, entice the kids to explore backyard nature, support butterfly populations and best of all, sit back to enjoy the show.
Butterflies drink nectar from flowers with a long, straw-like structure called a proboscis. A few potted plants can be all it takes to attract them, though some plants work better than others.
The reasons often lie in a plant’s origins. As plant breeders continually develop new varieties with bigger blooms in new colors, their value as food sources can be lost. Plants imported from other countries may also be less appetizing to our Midwestern butterflies.
As a rule of thumb, it’s best to stick with plants that are native to our area - we’ve listed some of our favorites on page 2 of the newsletter. We do use a few non-natives in our garden that are especially good nectar sources, such is zinnias, cosmos and Mexican sunflower (pictured below).
Here are a few more elements to keep in mind: most flowering plants and butterflies prefer a sunny location; arranging plants in clusters makes it easier for butterflies to find; and, including plants that flower at different times of the year provides continual nectar sources.
The plants on which butterflies lay eggs are referred to as host plants. Once eggs hatch into caterpillars, they feed on the host plant for a few weeks, and then transform in a cocoon into adult butterflies.
Many host (and nectar) plants are very common and often thought of as “weeds.” For instance, the spangled fritillary uses violets, which readily appear in most gardens. Welcoming such plants or living near a natural area is sufficient to provide host plants for many species — a few examples are listed on the next page.
Some butterflies need more specific or rare plants (and are often themselves less common and more vulnerable to habitat loss). The spectacularly striped zebra swallowtail, for instance, uses pawpaw trees found in the understory of woodlands.
Playing host to a butterfly brood requires tolerance of some caterpillar-chewed leaves, as well as limited pesticide use, which kills caterpillars and butterflies along with intended targets.
Butterflies are most active on warm and sunny days, and need trees or shrubs for shelter at night or during storms. Brush piles also provide great cover for overwintering butterflies, which, depending on the species, may pass these months as eggs, caterpillars, or adults.
If you decide that butterfly gardening is for you, it’s ok to start small and simple. It’s also a good idea to get to know common butterflies and the plants they prefer. We invite you to visit the BFEC Wildlife Garden to see our native plant collection and the butterflies that frequent it. While you’re here, stop in to peruse our library of field guides and gardening books.
For more butterfly information, visit the BFEC website, the ODNR Division of Wildlife and the North American Butterfly Association.
In every group, there are, of course, the rule-breakers. While many butterflies hibernate, eat and reproduce in predictable ways, flying about in summer months, feeding on flowers, there are those that defy generalizations.
The mourning cloak (pictured below) is one example. On warm winter days when snow melts and islands of wet earth emerge, you may find yourself startled by its flutter of yellow and black.
Most butterflies overwinter as eggs or larvae, and then spend weeks as caterpillars and in cocoons before emerging as the gloriously colored adult. Mourning cloaks, however, hunker down for winter in their adult form under flaps of bark or piles of brush, waiting to surprise us during an unusual warm spell. A sixty degree day, and they’re off! They live for ten months, and in the hot summer months that are the height of the season for other butterflies, they are thought to go into a form of summer hibernation, or aestivation.
Think butterflies are all sugar and spice? Morning cloaks and a few of its cousins charmingly feed on animal scat, and sometimes rotten fruit or tree sap. This is another characteristic that allows them to fly before many nectar sources are available in early spring.
And while we claimed earlier that most butterflies enjoy full sunshine, mourning cloaks are more often found in woodlands and the boarders of streams and wetlands, though they sometimes comply with butterfly norms by straying into open areas.
Food, shelter, water, and a place to raise young are the essential elements of a wildlife garden. The list below summarizes features that have been incorporated into the BFEC garden, primarily to attract butterflies. Visit www.nwf.org for additional tips.