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| Butterfly on lantana. (Photo by John Wozniak) |
News Release Distributed 05/21/10
By LSU AgCenter Horticulturists Dan Gill and Allen Owings
After a beautiful spring in Louisiana, butterfly gardening season is now upon us. As we near summer, we have more bedding plants and herbaceous perennials in bloom, and these naturally attract butterflies.
As interest increases in home gardening and landscape hobbies, people are more aware of natural habitats and environmental concerns. And with the need for more insect pollinators, gardeners are increasing their efforts to attract butterflies to their landscapes.
Many of the things we may already do in our home landscapes attract butterflies, but gardeners can provide a few things in a landscape to be successful.
Food, water, shelter and a place to reproduce are important. Shallow water sources, such as bird baths filled with moist pebbles or moist sand, are useful. Butterflies don’t like standing water.
Butterflies love old vegetable and fruit debris. Because butterflies are cold blooded, you also need to provide sun-basking areas – such as stones or boards – for adult butterflies. Nectar and larva plants for butterflies can include annual bedding plants, herbaceous perennials, native trees, native shrubs, vines and even plants like our popular evergreen azaleas.
Examples of bedding plants for butterfly gardening include vinca, impatiens, petunias, sunflowers, zinnias and salvia. Good herbaceous perennials are pentas, rudbeckia, butterfly bushes, coreopsis, daylily, verbena, lantana, cassia, gaillardia, milkweed and cuphea.
Butterfly gardens also can include trees and shrubs. All species of citrus are great if you like an evergreen tree in your butterfly garden. Oaks, ash, pawpaw, mayhaws, parsley hawthorn, elms and hackberries are good native deciduous trees. Evergreen shrubs for butterfly gardening include ligustrum and azaleas. Some plants attract several different butterflies while other plants only attract one specific type.
Common butterfly families found in Louisiana include milkweeds (monarchs), longwings (gulf fritillary), brushfoots (buckeye, viceroy and American painted lady), hackberry/goatweed (tawny emperor), skippers (dusty wings and skippers), swallowtails (tiger, zebra and eastern black), sulphurs/whites (sulphurs and Southern dog face), hairstreaks (gray and red banded), snouts/beaks (snouts) and satyrs (Carolina satyrs).
When you add nectar plants and larval plants to your landscape, you’ll be amazed how many butterflies you can attract. Many butterfly gardening plants also will attract hummingbirds.
Visit LaHouse in Baton Rouge to see sustainable landscape practices in action. The home and landscape resource center is near the intersection of Burbank Drive and Nicholson Drive (Louisiana Highway 30) in Baton Rouge, across the street from the LSU baseball stadium. For more information, go to www.louisianahouse.org and www.lsuagcenter.com/lyn.
Rick Bogren