Butterflies add interest to your garden and contribute to pollination of your garden plants. Though butterflies may not be as efficient as bees in pollinating plants, butterflies certainly do their fair share in bringing about seed and fruit production—and definitely are more pleasing to watch.
Butterflies pollinate a wide variety of flowers that open during the day. They frequent big, beautiful, brightly colored blooms. Butterflies have good color vision sensing more “wavelengths” than either humans or bees and, unlike bees; butterflies can see the color red.
Butterflies are found on every continent but Antarctica. The US is home to about 700 different species. Their mystery and beauty and mystery have enchanted mankind for centuries and woven in to legends and folklore. And,
We know that adult butterflies feed on the nectar of flowers, but did you know they lay their eggs on a limited number of native plants? This is because butterfly caterpillars are host specific. Plant-wise, the caterpillars of some butterfly species like asters, black-eyed Susan, clover, lupines, milkweed, sedum or violets. Aspen, birch, cherry, hackberry, oak or willow trees make caterpillars of other butterfly species equally happy.
Oddly enough, butterflies taste with their feet, which is where their taste sensors are located and by standing on their food, they can taste it to see if their caterpillars are able to eat it.
The top three nectar bearing food plants that butterflies love are butterfly weed, purple coneflowers and the New England Aster! If you plant all three of these plants, you will definitely be seeing a lot more butterflies in your yard! 4 more top plants are Milkweed, Marigolds, Oregano and the popular Butterfly bush.
Butterflies love to feed where it’s warm and sunny, but they hate fighting the wind when they’re trying to feed. Place a few flat stones in sunny, visible spots in your garden. Butterflies use the stones to rest on and warm themselves.
Give your butterflies a water hole by keeping a mud puddle constantly moist in a sunny spot, or place a bucket filled with constantly moist sand in your garden. Avoid using pesticides. Even relatively benign products could have a devastating effect on your butterfly friends.
One of the biggest things that you need to remember when you are attempting to attract butterflies to your garden is that you need to have a lot of different flowers for them to choose from. This way, you will definitely be attracting more than one type of butterfly.
Another great idea is to group the same types of flowers together; this will ensure that the butterflies will have easy access to their favorite flowers!
Want to know more about attracting butterflies to your garden?
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Yours truly for a great garden with butterflies, berries,veggies and flowers.
Polly-organic gardener
