Backstage at Disney World there are five gardens dedicated to encouraging and harboring butterflies. In this feature Disney pest management technician Jana Harris offers tips for attracting more of these beautiful creatures to your garden. Butterflies like warm, sunny gardens. At least six hours of sun per day not only invites butterflies but also helps their food sources produce more nectar. Butterfly bushes are staples in many butterfly gardens, but butterflies also get their food from a wide variety of other ornamental flowers and even weeds. Pentas, or star clusters (Pentas lanceolata), are good nectar plants, blooming year-round in the Deep South. Butterflies also like cosmos, coreopsis, Japanese thistle, purple coneflower and tropical milkweed (figure A). The tassel flower, a common weed in the Deep South, blooms early and provides nectar before many cultivated plants begin to flower. Some butterflies also like rotting fruit and meat, and even urine and manure (so livestock areas can actually be popular butterfly hangouts); monarch butterflies feed exclusively on milkweed. Other plants, such as passionflower and many herbs, aren't used for nectar, but instead serve as larval host plants. Butterflies are very host-specific, laying their eggs only on certain types of plants. Black swallowtails, for example, like to lay eggs on mock bishops; fennel, parsley and rue are among their favorite nectar sources. Painted ladies prefer cudweed, while white peacocks like bacopa. When plants aren't in bloom, you may want to supplement butterflies' diet with a sugar-water mix (a 4:1 ratio of water to sugar) or a prepackaged butterfly food. Also provide some rocks in your landscape -- butterflies like to perch on these to warm up in the morning. Create a windbreak with shrubbery because wind tires butterflies; the shrubs will also give them a place to hide from bad weather and predators. A "puddling area" -- a container full of compost or aged manure -- that's allowed to collect rainwater is useful too. Male butterflies use puddling areas to absorb salts and minerals to aid reproduction.
RESOURCES :
The Butterfly Web site
http://mgfx.com/butterfly
Children's Butterfly Site
Web site: www.mesc.nbs.gov/butterfly/Butterfly.html
At its companion, Butterflies of North America site, www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/distr/lepid/bflyusa/bflyusa.htm, you can click on a state and find a complete listing, including photographs, of butterflies that can be found there.
International Federation of Butterfly Enthusiasts
Web site: www.ifbe.org
Monarch Watch
Monarch Watch is a cooperative network of teachers, students and other monarch butterfly lovers, established by the universities of Kansas and Minnesota.
Web site: www.monarchwatch.org
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