Backyard butterflies

You can become a lepidopterist without any extra time in school and without paying any dues! All you have to do is provide butterflies with a place to lay eggs, food plants for their larva, a place to form a chrysalis, and nectar plants for the adults.

In fact, these needs are easily planned for by considering only the larval stage and the adult stage.

Larval stage

There is a wonderful thing about butterfly larvae.  They are very host-plant specific.  This means that by choosing the one or two particular plants on which a specific butterfly will lay her eggs, you can attract that species to your yard,

The monarch, for instance, will only lay her eggs on milkweed plants.  When the egg hatches, the monarch butterfly will begin devouring the milkweed’s foliage and thereby acquire all the food it needs for this stage of its life.

You will be happy to know that, although caterpillars munch off the foliage of the host plant, most butterfly caterpillars will never cause the damage we associate with moth caterpillars such as the bagworm or the gypsy moth.  Add a few extra plants and you may not even notice the missing foliage.

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension guide “Butterflies in Your Backyard” can be of great help in choosing caterpillar host plants for the adult butterflies you wish to attract. [Or refer to the agriculture service in your particular state.]  Here you will find that fritillaries prefer violets, the gulf fritillary loves passionflowers, and that the wild indigo duskywing has a preference for, of all things, the wild indigo plant.

So, now you have the caterpillars.  To keep them around, you must provide the food and shelter needed for the adult stage.

The adult stage

Adult butterflies are less plant specific and enjoy a wider range of food sources, though they still have some definite preferences.  When spring temperatures reach 60 degrees, butterflies begin to move around and look for spring flowers.  They are attracted to dense clusters of red, yellow, orange, pink, and purple blossoms.  The flower tubes offered in your garden should be of varying depths to accommodate the varying proboscis lengths of individual butterfly species. Place your nectar-producing plants in a location that receives six hours of full sun, as the adults of most species prefer to feed in the sunlight.

Some important nectar-producing herbs and wildflowers you might plant are purple coneflower, beebalm, phlox, rudbeckia, and goldenrod.  This group will produce nectar from May through October.  To provide nectar earlier in the season, from March until June, shrubs and trees offer some of the best choices.  Consider virginia willow, eastern redbud, wild azalea, and blueberry as your spring bloomers.

When choosing plants for your butterfly garden, remember that the greater the variety of nectar plants you offer, with bloom times from March through October, the more variety of butterflies you will attract to your yard.  Again, the publication “Butterflies in Your Backyard” will be of great assistance in your selection and lists only those nectar plants native to North Carolina.  Non-native ornamentals are often bred for color and bloom size and not for quality nectar production.

Some tips

• Some butterflies prefer to eat tree sap or rotting fruit rather than nectar.  Place applesauce, watermelon rinds, over-ripe bananas, and other fruits in a partially shaded garden nook to attract these species.
• Male butterflies like to “puddle”.  They do this to ingest salts for the production of sperm.  Create a puddle by providing a moist area of salt, sand, or compost.
• Butterfiles need havens fromm wind, rain, and predators.  Provide these by arranging leaf, rock or brush piles near your butterfly garden.
• Place a few rocks in your backyard.  Butterflies like to bask in the early morning sun, allowing their wings to act as solar collectors that soak up the sun before they fly.

The National Audubon Society (www.audubon.org) and the National Wildlife Federation (www.nwf.org) have good butterfly information and links, and the Carolina Butterfly Society (www.carolinabutterflysociety.org) has an excellent list of North Carolina butterfly populations.  If you prefer to use a book for reference, I would recommend G. Ajilvsgi’s “Butterfly Gardening for the South,” published in 1990 by Taylor Publishing Co. of Dallas, Texas.

Learn as much as you can about your favorite butterflies; then you can tell all your friends you’re a lepidopterist!

Published in the Sanford Herald.