flying flowers in the neighborhood garden

BY GLADYS JEURINK

           Hardly anything can beat a butterfly landing on your head or shoulder.  You must be nearly still and wearing a bright color.  Perfume or lotions that have the odor of a flower may help.  It’s easy to plant your garden to attract and keep “Flying Flowers” with a little planning. 

          First, you need to know about the life of the butterflies.  Eggs are laid on specific plants by females who check out the plants by stamping their feet on a leaf.  This releases the smell of the plant to see if it is a good food plant.  Monarch butterflies travel from Mexico by way of milkweeds. As they come in the spring they stop at patches of milkweed, lay their eggs and die leaving the next generation to carry on.  Black swallowtails like dill, fennel, or parsley.  If you want a variety of “Flying Flowers” then you must have a variety of food plants for them to lay their eggs on and for the larvae to feed on.  Many of the trees such as aspen, birch, cherry, elm, and oak are all good egg spots. 

           Many people spend energy trying to eliminate clover that is liked by sulphurs and blues, and violets that attract fritillary in their yard.  Instead think of them as food plants for the larvae of butterflies.  I have five colors of violets bordering my paths and plant clover in the lawn to attract butterflies.  Also rabbits prefer clover to many of my garden plants.  The late little skippers and nymphs use many of the grasses to feed their children.  Remember several years ago when Lincoln was “invaded” by painted ladies?  They like thistles but in my yard the larvae and eggs covered all my coneflowers.  To have adult butterflies you must grow plants for egg laying and larvae feeding and not just for adult butterflies.

          Female butterflies can lay up to 1500 eggs during their life.  The eggs are usually glued to the underside of a leaf, sometimes in clusters and sometimes singly.  How fast they hatch into larvae depends on the temperature.   

          The larvae look like caterpillars and are “eating machines” spending their time chewing and growing.  Some eat during the day while others eat at night.  As it eats it grows by shedding its skin and getting a new one.  The larger it grows, the more it eats, and the bigger the butterfly for its species.  In a bad food year, they pupate smaller and the adult butterfly will be smaller.  Many gardeners who do not know this life cycle, plant flowers to attract adult butterflies but they don’t like the caterpillars eating their plants.  Butterfly larvae (caterpillars) must be allowed to feed on the plants that the mother butterfly found to lay her eggs on, or you won’t have very many “Flying Flowers”.

          A major rule in butterfly gardens is never use an insecticide of any kind.  They kill good bugs, bad bugs and your larvae. Also it will kill birds if they eat enough of the poisoned insects.  A number of years ago a neighbor lost two cats and an autopsy revealed they had eaten too many dead, poisoned birds, which had eaten too many dead, poisoned insects plus they ran through the sprayed foliage.  Cabbage butterflies can be controlled by different forms of Bt (Dipel).  It kills the little green worms without harming anything else.  If you feed birds too, they will eat many of your future butterflies. 

          Egg, larvae, and then pupa or chrysalis are the life stages.  In the chrysalis stage it becomes a different creature.  The larva attaches itself to something and start rearranging.  Some live over winter as chrysalis, others as adults.  During this stage eating has stopped and your plants are safe. The chrysalis looks like a cocoon. If you bring one inside in a jar you can see changes going on as the case usually becomes transparent before the butterfly hatches. 

          When they first hatch, butterflies cannot fly but must wait usually upside down by its legs until the wings fill with fluid and expand.  As I indicated before, the adult (the “flying flower”) is a “reproductive machine” and the majority live only about two weeks.  However, some live all winter hidden in bark cracks, or under fallen leaves.  If you clean your yard too well you may kill all your butterflies. 

          Most “flying flowers” live year round in the same area but some migrate north in the spring.  The adults will feed on a greater variety of plants than their children.  They are after the nectar produced in the flowers and are equipped with a hollow “tongue” that can unroll and act like a straw.  In my yard their favorites are Joe Pye Weed, butterfly weed, butterfly bush, zinnias, single marigolds, bee balm, verbena bon arensis (brazilian verbena), cosmos, asters, and coneflowers.  When you plant for adult butterflies, plant in “clumps” of a number of plants so they can feed on several without hunting new plants.  Some of the skippers like crabgrass.  Most nurseries now mark their plants that are favorable to adult butterflies. 

July 24, 2004