async defer src="//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js" My Enchanting Cottage Garden: Flowers Butterflies Love

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Flowers Butterflies Love


Flowers Butterflies Love:  Butterflies will be very  happy to come to our backyards if we provide what they need. When planting new flowers take into  consideration nectar plants (flowers) attract  a wide variety of butterflies, and that larval foodplants attract very specific kinds of butterflies seeking plants on which to lay eggs and that will nourish the caterpillars.

If you desire to coax these beautiful winged creatures to your backyard plant the following flowers in you cottage garden.
 

  
Since many common butterflies are on the wing throughout the year , as long as it isn’t too cold or hot and dry—we can use different flowering plants to provide nectar throughout the year.


1In late fall, mountain marigold and rabbitbrush robe themselves in golden heads attracting a host of species. During the spring, patches of wildflowers come alive with butterflies.





Late summer flowering shrubs include red bird of paradise, butterfly bush, Mexican sunflower, lantana, desert lavender, and bee-brush; perennials include desert verbena, butterfly mist, floss-flower, and native passion vine. Strategic plantings or massing of these plants will fill a garden with a wide variety of butterflies.  Quite a few of these plants can be started as seeds from
Burbee Seeds Co.
 
 


                                                                    
 Some caterpillar food plants make excellent
background plantings, screens, or spots of greenery. Desert hackberry, a tall native shrub of desert washes is the foodplant of the Empress Leilia, and the American Snout. Fern acacia, a tropical-looking, low native shrub that makes a soft accent near a patio or pool, is also the food plant of the Acacia Skipper, and the Mexican Yellow.
 



 
Native mesquites are foodplants for hairstreaks, feather tree for sulphurs, kidneywood for the often numerous Marine Blue butterflies; and citrus trees for the Giant Swallowtail—the caterpillars resemble bird droppings.






 
 
Providing a butterfly house will also attract certain species of butterflies.  Burbee.com     has many varities to choose from.











 
 
  The plants listed here make a good start on a butterlfly garden. Many of these species look their fullest and best from late summer through fall, a time when there are normally many butterflies in the garden.
 
 
 

 
 BUTTERFLY PLANT LIST
 
 Perennials

Aristolochia watsonii, Native pipevine, foodplant for Pipevine Swallowtail
Bouteloua curtipendula, Sideoats grama (grass), foodplant for Orange Skipperling
Cosmos sulphureus, Cosmos, nectar plant
Dicliptera resupinata, Twinseed, foodplant for Texan Crescent




 
 
 
 
  • Passiflora foetida, Native passionvine (vine), foodplant for Gulf Fritillary
  • Petroselinum crispum, Parsley (biennial), foodplant for Black Swallowtail
  • Senna covesii, Desert senna, foodplant for Sleepy Orange, Cloudless Sulphur
  • Thymophylla pentachaeta, Dogweed, nectar plant; foodplant for Dainty Sulphur


Shrubs

  
 



Tags: flowers, plants, flowers butterflies love, butterfly, food, garden, gardening, yard, cottage garden

 

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