- Butterfly gardening draws visitors to your flowers. Image via Wikipedia
Beautify your yard, patio, or garden with a with plants that attract and nourish butterflies. The plants are beautiful in themselves, but the addition of the butterflies makes the setting exotic.
Two kinds of plants are needed for a butterfly garden. The caterpillars eat leaves of specific plants--these are called "host plants". The host plant is the place where the female butterfly will lay eggs and the caterpillars will feed after hatching. Do not spray for bugs and insects. The caterpillars look like pests, but they are juvenile butterflies.
Nourishment for the caterpillars is often found in weeds and wild plants such as thistles, milkweed, vetch, and clover. Some caterpillars prefer leaves on trees such as sycamore, elm, and hackberry. If you have trees that are good host plants, you are half-way there. Herbs, hollyhock and ornamental kale, or any member of the cabbage family, are good hosts plants if you don't have trees. Click here for a chart showing which plants are good hosts for specific butterflies.
After they eat and get fat, the spin a cocoon and develop. Do not disturb the cocoons and do not touch them when they emerge from the cocoon. It takes time for them to spread their wings and becomes ready to fly.
Nectar Plants
After they emerge from the pupa stage, they will require different nourishment, usually nectar from flowers. To plant appropriate flowers, click here. There are some top favorites of several different species: butterfly weed, purple cone flower, New England Aster, milkweed, marigolds, oregano, and butterfly bush.
- The flower of the Butterfly Weed. It is beautiful and attractive to butterflies.Image via Wikipedia
Conservation
Because of the growth of cities and the shrinking natural environment, butterfly gardening is important to maintain populations. Butterflies are important in the food web. Butterflies and caterpillars do not prey on any other creature, but they are at the bottom of the food web. Many birds and other creatures eat them. The balance of nature is severely disrupted when they are not available. Providing a place for them to reproduce is a significant contribution to the ecosystem. Butterflies, like bees, are important in the pollination of flowers and plants.
A butterfly garden can be as large or small as you care to make it as long as it has both host plants and nectar plants close together. TheButterflySite.com has plans to help you. Conservation and beauty combine in this activity to bless your life.
- Image via Wikipedia
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