Making Butterfly Habitat using Native Plants and Other Things By Gordon Pratt
Habitats • Dry washes • North facing slopes • South facing slopes • Wet areas such as springs and creeks • Canyons • Sagebrush • Hilltops
Work together in Neighborhoods • Get together with your neighbors and discuss a neighborhood butterfly garden • One yard can specialize in shade food plants • Another can plant largely food plants adapted to dry habitats • Another can specialize in milkweeds • Another can specialize in nectar plants • Another can specialize in wild buckwheats • If enough yards get involved, most food plants of your local butterflies can be planted in the neighborhood
Good Nectar Plants for Butterflies • Try to find plants that have long bloom periods • Try to find plants that bloom at seasons of the year that others do not • Buckwheats • Sunflower family • California tickseed (Leptosyne californica [Coreopsis californica]) • Desert bush sunflower (Encelia farinosa) • Butterweeds (Senecio spp.) • Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia, non-native) • Hoary Aster (Dieteria canescens [Machaeranthera canescens]) • In OC: Fleabane daisies (Erigeron spp.), Asters (Symphyotrichum spp.), Sand asters (Corethrogyne spp.) • Salt heliotrope (Heliotropium curassavicum) • Western sea-purslane (Sesuvium verrucosum) - a native iceplant
Not So Good Nectar Plants for Butterflies • Some plants, even though they may look beautiful, are not that attractive to general insects • These plants may have specialized insects that pollinate them • Prickly poppy (Argemone munita) - bees, beetles • Mariposa lilies (Calochortus spp.) - bees, beetles • Beardtongues (Penstemon spp., Keckiella spp.) - bees, birds
Most Butterflies require specific larval food plants • Some butterfly larvae feed on the leaves of specific plants • Other butterfly larvae feed only on the flowers and seeds of specific plants • Quino checkerspot (Euphydryas editha quino) • Plantains (Plantago spp.) • Snapdragons (Antirrhinum spp.) • Chinese houses (Collinsia heterophylla) • Mallows such as desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) • West coast lady (Vanessa annabella) • Checkered skippers (Pyrgus albescens, P. communis) Page 1 of 2 • Turpentine broom (Thamnosma montana) • Desert swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes coloro) • Parish’s tauschia (Tauschia parishii) • Indra swallowtail (Papilio indra) - not in or near OC • Southern tauschia (Tauschia arguta) • Western carrot (anise) swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon) - OC • Paintbrushes (Castillija spp.) • Castillija foliolosa - Leanira checkerspot (Thessalia leanira [Chlosyne leanira]) - in OC, high elevations • Castillija plagiotoma - Ehrlich’s checkerspot (Euphydryas ehrlichi) - not in or near OC • Nettles (Urtica holosericea) • Milbert’s tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti) • Red admiral (Vanessa atalanta rubria) • Commas (Polygonia spp.) • Lupines (Lupinus spp.) • Blues (family Lycaenidae)
Deciding what to plant in your yard for butterflies • Read books on local butterflies to decide which species will occur in your area • Generally there are maps of the ranges of butterflies & some indication of the elevations at which they occur • Identify the larval food plants for the butterflies in your area and plant ones that you think are appropriate • Plant flowering plants that flower at different times of year
Ants • Some lycaenid butterfly larvae require specific ants
Mudpuddling • Wet areas along the edges of ponds and creeks • Moist areas along drainages
Hilltops and drainages for mate searching • Some butterflies require hilltops to mate, while others search for mates along drainages • Male Quino Checkerspot butterflies will sit on an open piece of ground at a hilltop waiting for a female • Male Pale Swallowtail butterflies will perch on a bush at a hilltop waiting for a female • Male Western Tiger Swallowtail butterflies
Overnight Roosting Sites • Many butterflies find roosting sites when it starts to get dark before a rain and before sunset
Diapause and Pupation Sites • Quino Checkerspot have been found to diapause around the base of California buckwheat • El Segundo Blue larvae burrow into soft sand to pupate • Some chrysalises (& some larvae) will diapause for many years so these sites can be extremely important
Peter Bryant’s Natural History of OC - http://nathistoc.bio.uci.edu BAMONA - http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org Butterflies of America - http://butterfliesofamerica.com Bug Guide - search for insect photos by name - http://bugguide.net Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation - http://www.xerces.org Xerces Calif plant list - http://www.xerces.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/CaliforniaPlantList_web.pdf Tree of Life Nursery: Bob Allen’s Butterfly Gardening - http://tinyurl.com/houp9cw Tree of Life Nursery: Natives for Butterflies - http://tinyurl.com/z7v28xj
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