Gold Coast Gardener

September 10, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

Most people enjoy seeing colorful butterflies in their landscaping and if they’re really lucky maybe observing hummingbirds drinking from flowers. If you haven’t had a lot of these in your landscape, it’s probably because you don’t have the right types of plants to attract them. Butterfly gardening is becoming a big item in many communities and it doesn’t take a lot of effort.

To attract butterflies you need to have a nectar source for the adults and plants they can lay eggs on for their young to make additional new butterflies. Many of our native plants are excellent for butterfly attractors and some of the most common seen in the landscape include firebush, porter weed and lantana. A non-native firespike is also a great attractor of butterflies and many types of commonly used landscaping such as jatropha and milkweed will attract many types of butterflies.

Most garden centers and retail nurseries have many butterfly plants to choose from and you can select low growing plants or ones that make large shrubs or even small trees. If you have tubular type flowers, these attract hummingbirds and the native firebush is a good example. Firespike is another favorite with it’s brilliant flowers, but it also comes in pink and lavender, too, which the hummingbirds will visit.

Even large trees such as the Hong Kong orchid will attract hummingbirds. In my own personal garden every October when the hummingbirds arrive my large Hong Kong orchid is one of the first trees they start to visit on a regular basis since that is also the season it begins it’s fall and winter bloom.

If you like passion flowers, they are excellent for butterflies to lay their eggs on and many types of passion vines are available in a variety of colors. You won’t see many of the adult butterflies working the flowers, but you will see them laying eggs which turn into caterpillars that chew the foliage, but a few weeks later these turn into beautiful butterflies and the plant makes a full recovery.

Milkweed is another plant that gets quickly devoured by the larva of the Monarch butterfly, but within a few weeks those caterpillars change into beautiful butterflies and the plant puts out replacement leaves and everything is back to normal.

Dutchman’s pipe vine which has a peculiar looking flower is also an excellent larva food for several types of butterflies and even dooryard fruit trees like citrus are often visited by the giant swallowtail butterfly which lays it’s eggs on the new growth and the caterpillars do minor damage and produce large beautiful black and yellow swallowtail butterflies in a few weeks.

Most gardeners learn to accept some damage from the butterfly larva because that is part of the life cycle. Adult butterflies only live a very short time and if you didn’t have a way for them to reproduce then you would stop seeing butterflies coming by in large numbers. By having both nectar foods and larva foods in the same property this way the butterflies don’t have to leave; they can stay there their entire lives, reproduce and then their offspring can continue the cycle.

Hummingbirds are a little bit more difficult to keep unless you have large numbers of flowers that they like, but if you put plenty of tubular type flowers, particularly ones that have orange or red flowers, this seems to attract hummingbirds if they are in the area. Generally our fall migration starts in October and the hummingbirds are around until the end of April when they head north for the summer months.

If you’d like to know specifically favorite plants for certain butterflies or for hummingbirds, pick up some of the free literature available at the Palm Beach County Extension office during normal business hours. The Extension Service also can advise you over the telephone about plants to include in your garden and landscaping.

Dial 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.