House & Garden: Butterfly buffet

How a butterfly earns its wings

Butterfly gardening is a labor of love requiring smart planning, knowledge of these fragile beauties' life cycle and sacrifice (more about that later).

A butterfly garden can encompass a whole yard or thrive on a sunny patio. One compromise involves creating a butterfly border in the landscape. Many popular plants prized for their heat- and drought-tolerance and reliable color also enjoy reputations as butterfly magnets, so you'll reap multiple benefits.

In fact, plants such as lantana, salvia, zinnia, penta, verbena and butterfly bush may be at home in your yard already.

Look at the garden through the eyes of a butterfly, advises Geyata Ajilvsgi in Butterfly Gardening for the South (Taylor Publishing, 1990).

She suggests blending the needs and preferences of butterflies with landscape plans, and planting to attract butterflies that are most common in your area.

A good source of local information is the Dallas Horticulture Center, which features a butterfly garden as well as offering a spring workshop, a habitat certification program and a butterfly immersion exhibit (available during the State Fair of Texas).

With that in mind, Tina Dombrowski, director of horticulture at the Dallas Horticulture Center, recommends these nectar plants for the Dallas area: butterfly bush, lantana, penta, sedum, buttonbush, coneflower, black-eyed Susan, frostweed, goldenrod, hummingbird bush, verbena and Mexican sunflower.

"Butterflies are particularly attracted to [blooms in shades of] pinks, mauves, yellows and oranges," Ms. Dombrowski says. "However, they will still visit reds, purples, whites and blues."

But nectar plants are only part of a butterfly's needs during its life cycle (see story on Page 8G). Host plants are equally important during the larval stage to feed the rapidly growing caterpillar.

And that's where sacrifice comes in. A successful butterfly garden must provide host plants that will be stripped of foliage by the hungry caterpillars, often several times a season. For example, the Dallas Horticulture Center cultivates and distributes woolly pipevine (Aristolochia tomentosa) specifically as a host plant for the pipevine swallowtail butterfly.

"It's an attractive, vigorous vine with heart-shaped leaves," Ms. Dombrowski says. "By the time it comes up in the spring, butterflies start laying eggs on it. The caterpillars eat it down several times in a season, sometimes right to the ground, but it comes right back."

Her suggestions for other garden host plants: dill, parsley, hackberry, elm, willow, passionflower, milkweed, frogfruit, wisteria and hollyhocks.

It's possible to combine nectar and host plants in a pleasing border. First, select a sunny, open site protected from the wind. In most cases, flowers grown in full sun produce more nectar, in turn attracting more butterflies. Host plants may be scattered in the back of the border or in remote areas of the yard to minimize their ragged or "weedy" appearance. Nectar plants should be planted in masses, concentrating colors and fragrances to attract butterflies and to conserve the insects' energy while feeding.

But a butterfly-friendly landscape goes beyond a "plant it and they will come" philosophy.

A key to butterfly gardening, says Randy Weston of Weston Gardens in Bloom in Fort Worth, is to have a cycle of flowering plants from early spring through fall so there's always something for butterflies to eat. Some of his longtime nectar favorites are verbena, purple coneflower, vitex and lantana.

Container plantings offer an easy way to rotate host plants as they are consumed by caterpillars. Pots of dill and parsley - planted at varying intervals during the growing season - can provide an ever-ready food source.

"Some people don't allow for the larval stage and are reluctant to sacrifice plants to the caterpillars," he says. "But, you won't have butterflies unless you give them host plants, too."

Like all creatures, butterflies need food, water and shelter, Mr. Weston adds. A good butterfly garden will provide food plus shallow water, a place to roost and shelter from wind and storms.

Butterflies often "puddle," or gather at muddy places in the landscape, to get soil salts and minerals as well as moisture. A puddling place can be created with a plastic container filled with builder's sand and fine gravel, kept slightly damp and "flavored" with a small amount of compost. Chunks of overripe fruit placed in large ceramic or terra-cotta saucers also provide nutrients and moisture.

Since butterflies like to absorb the sun's warmth, provide a few basking rocks or smooth surfaces where they can spread their wings.

During inclement weather, butterflies must seek shelter. Tall grasses and weeds, shrubs, woodpiles and even cracks in logs can shield them from wind, rain and cold.

Pesticides should be avoided in a butterfly garden, says Charlene Rowell, staff horticulturist for the Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary in McKinney.

Though fire ants are one of the worst enemies to butterfly larvae and chrysalides, they can be controlled with nonchemical methods, as well as fire ant-specific chemical treatments. Carefully reading and following label instructions and talking with other butterfly gardeners will help you find solutions that won't harm the beauties you're trying to attract.

Marsha Murray Harlow is a free-lance writer in San Antonio.

For more information

The first stop for information about butterflies and butterfly gardening should be the Dallas Horticulture Center and its Blachly Conservatory in Fair Park. (3601 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 214-428-7476).

The conservatory houses a butterfly immersion exhibit each fall during the State Fair of Texas, in which visitors can walk among many varieties of butterflies feeding and flying and watch butterflies emerging from chrysalides. The center, which features a butterfly garden with more than 48 species of plants, also propagates and distributes two hard-to-find varieties of pipevine, an essential host plant for the pipevine swallowtail butterfly.

A three-hour workshop, "A Garden for Butterflies," is offered each spring, featuring experts on native butterfly and plant species, and lepidopterists. It will be held April 1 from 9 a.m. to noon at the center. Cost is $15 for DHC members and $20 for nonmembers. Reservations are required. Participants will receive plants for a butterfly garden, including two varieties of pipevine, Aristolochia tomentosa and Aristolochia fimbriata.

A Butterfly Habitat Certification program also is available through the center, with 24 habitats already certified in the Dallas area.

A list of the center's top 10 recommendations for butterfly host plants and nectar plants is available by sending $1 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the Dallas Horticulture Center, P.O. Box 152537, Dallas, Texas 75315.

Other resources: Weston Gardens in Bloom will offer habitat garden seminars June 3-4, focusing on birds and butterflies. Seminars are free. 8101 Anglin Drive, Fort Worth, Texas 76140; 817-572-0549.

Useful Web sites: Dallas County Lepidopterists Society - http://home.earthlink.net/~nardoz/dcls.html. and the North American Butterfly Association - www.NABA.org.

Books: Butterfly Gardening for the South, by Geyata Ajilvsgi (Taylor Publishing, Dallas).

Eastern Butterflies, by Paul Opler and Vichai Malikul (R.T. Petersen Field Guide Series, Houghton-Mifflin).

Butterflies of Houston and Southeast Texas, by John and Gloria Tveten (University of Texas Press).

Mail-order nurseries: Logee's Greenhouses, 806-774-8038.

Forest Farm, 541-846-7269.

F.W. Schumacher Co., 508-888-0659.

BUTTERFLY PLANTS

These plant lists for North Central Texas are based on recommendations by Tina Dombrowski, director of horticulture for the Dallas Horticulture Center; Randy Weston, owner of Weston Gardens in Bloom; and Charlene Rowell, staff horticulturist for the Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary.

HOST PLANTS:

Dill

Parsley

Milkweed

Passionflower

Hercules'-club

Hackberry

Elm

Willow

Cassia (also called senna)

Wisteria

Frogfruit

Hollyhock

Woolly pipevine (Aristolochia tomentosa)

NECTAR PLANTS:

Lantana

Verbena

Butterfly bush

Penta

Salvia

Purple coneflower

Globe amaranth

Sedum

Honeysuckle

Glossy abelia

Vitex

Frostweed

Mistflower