A Prairie Garden Journal    by Dick Meyer

Butterfly

Gardening

Tiger Swallowtail

With the Wyobraska prairie turning lush green this spring, and the spring rains appearing to extend into early summer, look for 2009 to be a banner year for butterflies around the region.   Butterflies love Wyobraska’s normally sunny and relatively moderate summer temperatures, but prefer a somewhat greener landscape than that which the drought afflicted region has offered in recent years.  By mid June, the first of a summer-long succession of butterfly migrations should be flitting their way through the region.  The normal butterfly season extends into late September or early October, offering Wyobraska gardens almost four full months of opportunities to bring these colorful guests into your garden for a visit.
 

But butterflies cannot live by nectar and leaf alone.  A complete butterfly garden should include at least one sunny wall surface or large flat rock on which butterflies can sit in the sun and warm themselves.  Warming is an important part of the daily ritual of an adult butterfly.  Butterflies also need a source of water.  They prefer to drink at shallow pools of water. An old bird bath placed on the ground that collects rainfall or water from the sprinkler system makes an ideal butterfly watering hole. 

 Butterfly caterpillars are a favorite food of birds.  But they are even more vulnerable to pesticides.  Many gardeners have been taught to spray or otherwise kill any caterpillar in their

Previous Articles

Yes It's Time March 12

Pruning Trees March 26

Plant a Tree in 2009 April 02

Great Old Trees April 09

"Nightmare on Elm Street?"
Elms & Oaks for WyoNeb
April 16

Green, Easy & Cheap April 23

No GardenSpace? No Problem
April 30

A Mother's Garden May 07

What Makes a Good Perennial?
May 14

Summer School - Kids Gardening
May 21

Do it yourself Landscape Planning
May 28

2008 Articles

2007 Articles

2006 Articles
 

You can attract some of these butterfly tourists to your garden simply by planting some of the flowers that attract the adult butterflies.  But in order to turn your garden into a true butterfly oasis, your butterfly garden will need to have a combination of host and nectar plants.  Host plants are the plants on which the adult butterflies lay eggs, and the plants on which the young larvae or caterpillars feed.   The eggs are generally laid on the underside of leaves.  When the eggs hatch, the larvae then typically eat on the leaves of the host plants, so host plants are those which harbor and nourish the butterfly in its initial life stages.  Nectar plants are typically the flowers from which adult butterflies gather nectar for their food.  

Monarch Butterfly and Caterpillar

Typical lists of butterfly attracting nectar plants read like a list of western prairie garden plants:  purple coneflower, asters, butterfly milkweed, coreopsis, daylily, liatris, goldenrod, Joe-Pye weed, allium, dianthus, black-eyed susan, sedum, and yarrow.  All are easy to grow perennials that are also beautiful flowers and well-behaved garden plants.  Butterflies are present in the region from May through September, so it is best to include flowers that bloom in succession throughout that period.

A variety of suitable host plants that are also easy to grow include chokecherry, American plum, and oak among the trees and shrubs.  Broccoli, cabbage, dill, parsley, and sweet fennel, snapdragon, sunflower, milkweeds, hollyhock, and hibiscus are annual and perennial plants that are strongly favored by butterflies as host plants.  Many of these host plants are not known as attractive garden plants, but with a little creativity, all can be worked into an aesthetically pleasing flower garden that is also a butterfly haven. 

A key to a thriving butterfly garden is the avoidance of any pesticide use.  This is a big step for gardeners that have been conditioned to think that pesticides are an essential part of gardening, but in my opinion there simply is never a need to use any pesticide in a well-managed garden, anyway.  Once you stop using pesticides, you may find a few more beetles, grubs and miscellaneous insects in your garden.  But you will also find that their populations stay under control, and you will find grateful birds coming to your garden for regular meals.

Butterflies Found in Wyobraska

Alfalfa Butterfly
American Painted Lady
Cabbage Butterfly
Checkered Skipper
Clouded Sulphur
Eastern Black Swallowtail
Eastern Tailed Blue
Gorgone Checkerspot
Gray Hairstreak
Great Spangled Fritillary
Monarch
Painted Lady
Pearly Crescent
Red Admiral
Spring Azure
Tawny-edged Skipper
Tiger Swallowtail
Variegated Fritillary

Painted Lady Butterfly

The Life Cycle of Butterflies

Life cycles vary among species, but generally eggs hatch 3-6 days after they are laid.  Most species remain in larval or caterpillar stage for 3-4 weeks, shedding their skin 4-6 times during that period as they grow.  They then spend 9-14 days in their chrysalis before emerging as an adult butterfly.  Adult butterflies generally live less than 30 days, although some live longer.   Most species have several generations per year.