Attracting Butterflies to Your Garden

Transcription

1 Attracting Butterflies to Your Garden The first step in creating a butterfly garden involves a little scouting and research. The goal is to find out what butterflies live around you so you can include the plants they need for food. The best way to start is to look for butterflies around your proposed garden. Look who visits your neighbors yards and nearby parks and write down the species you see. Butterflies feed on nectar, and a good source of this food will attract them to your garden. Include flowers that bloom at different times so that your garden provides nectar from spring through autumn. When you plan your garden, place short species in front and tall ones in the back, and clump them by species and color. As butterflies search for food, they will see large splashes of color more easily than small points of individual flowers. Butterflies are particularly attracted to red, orange, yellow, and purple flowers. Avoid big showy flowers bred for their size; they are often poor nectar sources. Butterflies require very specific plants as larvae, and females will lay their eggs only on these plants. For example, you will only get Monarch larvae if your garden contains milkweed. Use information and books about butterflies to help you choose plants for butterfly larvae. But remember, the purpose of these plants is to serve as a food source for the caterpillars. You are planting them to be eaten by the caterpillars, and eaten leaves are good sign of your gardens health. As you maintain your garden do not use any pesticides or insecticides on or near your garden. Insecticides kill butterflies too. If you spray nearby areas, the insecticide may drift into your butterfly garden. Planting a diversity of species will help keep past levels down, but sometimes it is best just to tolerate a few pests. Avoiding insecticides also allows the population of natural predators to increase, and these hunters will help reduce the number of unwanted pests. Can We Help The Decline of the Marcharch? As I'm sure you have heard there's been a lot of in the news lately about the decline of the monarch butterfly so I want to give you a little bit of background on the Monarch. The adult monarch butterfly lays its eggs only on a milkweed leaf. That egg becomes a larva or a caterpillar and that caterpillar munches away on the milkweed leaf. Eventually the caterpillar cocoons into a crystalis, and in about two weeks a butterfly is born. Its wings are crumpled up and the butterfly hangs there and takes on air as its wings swell and take shape. The wings are moist and need to dry and harden before it can fly off seeking nectar. The majority of Monarch butterflies live only four or five weeks. During this time they feed on nectar from the plants in our gardens. As autumn weather arrives in their northern habitat monarchs have the capability to create an especially long lived group of prodigy called the Methuselah Generation after the Old Testament figure with the oldest mentioned age in the Bible. Even though these butterflies look like summer adults, they won't mate or lay eggs until the following spring. Instead their small bodies, weighing only ½ a gram, prepare for their

2 strenuous flight consuming as much nectar from our flowers as they can. Fat stored in their abdomen is a critical element of the survival of for the winter. Otherwise solitary insects, monarchs usually cluster together at night while moving southward. These particular butterflies are capable of surviving up to seven or eight months, long enough to make a southern migratory flight of between 1200 to 3000 miles to the mountains of central Mexico and later begin their trip up north. Another unsolved mystery is how the monarch finds the same overwintering sites each year. Somehow they know their way even though the butterflies returning to Mexico each fall are the great-great-grandchildren of the butterflies that left the previous spring. No one knows exactly how their homing system works. It's another of the many unanswered questions in the butterfly world. Once there they cluster together again in Mexico, hanging on to the branches of cedar or other fur tress, they enter hibernation between late October and early November to spend the winter. As the weather warms up in the second half of February these same butterflies awake and mate and begin the first leg of the long return flight north. During the two month-long migration, females lay eggs, creating successive generations who will complete the spring track north until the butterflies reach their reproductive grounds in North America as far north as Canada. Which brings us to the question at hand: what is causing the decline of the monarchs? The first reason is the dramatic reduction of the butterflies habitat in Mexico due to illegal logging of the trees they depend upon for shelter. After steep steady declines in the last three years, the butterflies now cover only 1.65 acres in the pine and fir forests west of Mexico City compared with 2.93 acres last year. They covered more than 44.5 acres at the last recorded peak in The second reason for fewer numbers of Monarchs is the decline of milkweed. Remember milkweed feeds the Monarch babies: it's their nursery, day care center, and cafeteria rolled up into one. It's genetically engineered crops that are the reason. Although science promised us that these crops would reduce pesticide use, the opposite has been true. The most popular genetically engineered crops are the so-called Roundup ready corn and soybeans from Monsanto. A staggering 90% of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States is Roundup ready, a genetic tinkering that allows farmers to saturate their fields with massive amounts of the potent herbicide - at levels that would cause normal corn and soybean plants to wither up and die. Milkweed is one of the many wild plants that have suffered collateral damage from this practice but it's the critical plant for the Monarch survival. It is the hope that home gardeners can replace at least some of the milkweed lost to Roundup. So I am encouraging you to plant some milkweed in your gardens not only to attract these beautiful Monarch butterflies but possibly helping sustain them. Milkweed grows best in zones 3 through 9. They can get up to 3 feet tall and blooms in the summer. Clusters of blooms form in a globe shape at the top of the plant and come in several shades of pink yellow, orange or purple depending upon the variety, making it a pretty addition to a garden landscape or wild area.

3 Because they are wildflowers milkweed is drought resistant making it a nice addition to a low-water landscape. Another advantage is that milkweed requires no fertilizing. It does well even in poor soil. It requires little maintenance, which is great news for us already busy gardeners who just want to help out the butterflies. You should know that milkweed leaves are toxic which should be kept in mind if you have pets or small children. This toxicity however, is part of what makes them useful to monarchs. The caterpillars eat the leaves making them toxic to predators. Another thing you should know is that the common milkweed can be very invasive so it's best to avoid that plant. The two varieties in our area that I would recommend are: Ascleias tuberosa or Butterfly Weed (not to be confused with the Butterfly Bush) This was the 2013 GCA Plant of the Year receiving the Martine McDaniels Freeman Award Asclepias incarnate or Swamp Milkweed I have grown the tropical milkweed very successfully and had the monarchs lay their eggs on it, but recently it has been advised not to plant tropical varieties of milkweed as they could be harboring a disease that s deadly to the monarchs, and they might interfere with their migratory instincts. Just plant milkweeds that are native. You can grow milkweed from seed, but I think it might be too late for this year. I contacted Mostardi s and found they carry milkweed, so that may be the nearest source. Also Park Seed and Michigan Bulb catalogs list milkweed plants for sale. A few Monarch Morsels: Monarchs flap their wings 5 to 12 times per second. Monarchs glide at 11 miles an hour. When flapping their wings, they've been clocked at 30 miles an hour. Monarchs fly up to 80 miles a day. In her lifetime of female monarch lays 500 eggs, one at a time, but only about five will survive to maturity. Monarch feet are thought to be 2000 times more sensitive to taste then human taste buds. Good Nectar Sources:

4 PLANT COLOR HEIGHT BLOOM PERIOD SHRUBS Azalea variable shrub spring Buddleia blue, pink, white shrub midsummer-fall Lilac lavender, white, pink shrub spring Sumac white shrub spring Vaccinium spp. white, pink low shrubs spring-early summer Viburnums white shrubs spring CULTIVATED ANNUALS Alyssum violet, white 4 inches summer-fall Candytuft white, pink 8-10 inches spring-summer Cosmos white, lilac, red, yellow 1-3 feet late summer Gaillardia multicolor 24 inches summer-fall Impatiens multicolor 6-18 inches summer-fall Marigold yellow, orange 6-24 inches summer-fall Mignonette red inches summer-fall Scabiosa blue, rose, white inches summer-fall Verbena multicolor 8-10 inches midsummer-fall Zinnias multicolor inches summer-fall CULTIVATED PERENNIALS Anthemis yellow 24 inches summer Arabis pink, white 8-10 inches spring Asters white, lavender, yellow inches summer-fall Aubrieta purple 4 inches spring Bee Balm red or white 36 inches summer Butterfly Weed orange inches midsummer Daisy yellow, white inches summer Catmint (Catnip) lavender inches summer Phlox pink, lavender, white 6-36 inches summer-fall Primrose multicolor 4 inches spring Purple Coneflower purple, white inches summer Sedum Spectabile pink 12 inches late summer WILD PERENNIALS Boneset white inches late summer Black-Eyed Susan yellow inches late summer Blazing Star purple up to 18 inches summer Dandelion yellow 4-12 inches spring-fall Dogbane pink to white shrub early summer Goldenrod yellow inches late summer Joe-Pye-Weed lavender inches late summer Milkweeds lavender, orange inches summer New England Aster purple inches late summer Thistle pink, purple inches summer Wild Bergamot pink, lavender inches summer

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