A Fluttering Garden

Image Gallery This bee balm flower provides a resting place and sweet nectar for a festive American painted lady. Photograph by J. G. Strauch, Jr.

FEW SIGHTS are more relaxing and uplifting than a butterfly gracefully flitting from flower to flower in the garden. For centuries, people have been fascinated by these beautiful yet commonplace creatures. Bearing fanciful names such as painted lady, mourning cloak, silvery blue, and spring azure, butterflies evoke an image of elusive, fleeting beauty that stirs the imagination. Attracting butterflies to your own garden is easy: all you really need is a sunny location where you can plant nectar-producing flowers for adult butterflies and host plants for their larvae.

Butterflies find many common herbs irresistible. You can encourage a wide variety of butterflies—from tiny skippers to magnificent swallowtails—to linger in your herb garden by growing clumps of bright yellow goldenrod, a variety of mints, yarrows, and other delicacies. Since many herbs are excellent food sources for butterflies and both herbs and butterflies share an affinity for open space and sunshine, a well-designed herb garden can be a haven for butterflies. Familiar herbs such as parsley, dill, anise, and fennel are also food plants of the caterpillars of several species. Planting a combination of butterfly-attracting herbs and traditional butterfly namesake plants such as butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) and butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) can practically guarantee a constant stream of butterflies to your garden from spring through fall. Buddleia’s fragrant purple, pink, blue, or white flower spikes in late summer attract adult monarchs, mourning cloaks, red admirals, gulf fritillaries, and many other species. Butterfly weed, an orange-flowered milkweed that’s also known as pleurisy root, furnishes nectar to adults; caterpillars feed on the foliage, which then makes them taste bitter to predators.

THE LIFE OF A BUTTERFLY

Butterflies begin life as an egg that has been deposited on or near a host plant. At hatching, a tiny, hungry caterpillar (larva) emerges and begins feeding on the host plant (or in some species, on its own egg­shell). As it grows, the caterpillar sheds its skin several times, each time replacing it with a larger one. After three or four weeks, the caterpillar sheds one last time and turns into a chrysalis (pupa). It usually takes one to two weeks for the pupa to make the amazing and complex transformation into a butterfly. When the adult butterfly emerges, it begins searching for food and a mate. Most adults live for two or three weeks, a few live for ten months or longer, but some survive for only a few days.