I’m often asked, “How do I start a butterfly garden?” and, “How can I get butterflies to come to my garden?” or, “I have lots of flowers but how come I never see any butterflies? Plant host plants! It takes more than nectar to entice butterflies to take up residence in your garden.

Larval host plants are the secret to successful butterfly gardening; they are plants required by a caterpillar for growth and development. By planting host plants in your garden, you offer a promise of food for the next generation and will attract more butterflies than you thought possible.

If you do not have host plants in your garden, butterflies may come to visit the flowers for nectar, but then they will leave. Butterflies are on a mission. Females are busy looking for places to lay their eggs. Males are also attracted to host plants, where they can find females for mating. So make it easy for them and plant those plants they need for their offspring.

Below are some common North American butterflies and their host plants. I have included some of the most common and easiest butterflies to attract. As you learn more about the different species of butterflies that are native to your area you can expand the different types of host plants to put in your garden.

Monarch (Danaus plexippus)
Queen (Danaus gilippus)

The eastern North American Monarch is known for its annual southward late-summer/autumn migration from the northern and central United States and southern Canada to Florida and Mexico. During the fall migration, monarchs cover thousands of miles, with a corresponding multigenerational return north. The western North American population of monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains often migrates to sites in southern California.

Queen butterflies can be found regularly in peninsular Florida and southern Georgia, as well as in the southern portions of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Occasionally, the subspecies of the queen can be found somewhat north, in Kansas, Colorado, and Utah. Periodically, a stray may be found in the Midwest, such as in Missouri.

American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis)

The American Lady butterfly  occurs from southern Canada throughout the U.S. and southward to northern South America and is seen occasionally in Europe, Hawaii, and the larger Caribbean islands. Occasionally individuals can be found as far as southwest Europe. It has been introduced to Hawaii.

Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)

Black Swallowtails are some of the easiest butterflies to attract to your garden not only because they have so many host plants that are very easy to grow from seed. They are found from southern Canada through to South America. In North America they are more common east of the Rocky Mountains.

Painted Lady (Vanessa Cardui)

The Painted Lady butterfly is another common butterfly that can easily be attracted to your garden because it has so many different flowering plants that are host plants for their caterpillars. It is the most widespread of all butterfly species and is found on all continents except Australia and Antarctica. From the deserts of northern Mexico, the Painted Lady migrates and temporarily colonizes the United States and Canada south of the Arctic. (Click here to read more about the Painted Lady Migration: http://butterfly-lady.com/the-incredible-migrating-painted-lady/)

Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia)

The Common Buckeye is found in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and in Mexico. Its habitat is open areas with low vegetation and some bare ground. The species Junonia grisea, the gray buckeye, is found west of the Rocky Mountains.

Cabbage White (Pieris rapae)
Checkered White (Pontia protodice)
Great Southern White (Ascia monuste)

Cabbage White  butterflies are native to Eurasia. They have been introduced to southern Canada and most of the U.S. and are common in most open areas, like road sides and gardens.  It is one of the first butterflies that appear in the spring. It is a pest to crucifer crops such as cabbage, kale, bok choy and broccoli.

Great Southern White butterflies are found from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. It is migratory along the southeastern coast of the United States, with strays to Maryland, Kansas, and Colorado.

Checkered White butterflies are  most commonly found in the southern parts on the United States along with some of the northern areas of Mexico. Occasionally the species can be found in the northern parts of the U.S. and southern Canada

Cloudless Sulphur (Phoebis sennae)
Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)
Ceranus Blue (Hemiargus ceraunus)
Sleepy Orange (Eurema nicippe)

The Cloudless Sulphur is a large yellow butterfly found throughout most of the mainland United States. It is most common in the eastern United States and southern portions of the western United States, but it has been spotted as far north as Canada.

The Gray Hairstreak is one of the most common hairstreaks in North America, ranging over nearly the entire continent. It also occurs throughout Central America and in northern South America.

The Ceraunus Blue butterflies are small and easy to overlook. They are found in the Southwest, South Texas, Florida and the Keys south through the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America to South America. Strays sometimes to North Carolina, Missouri, Kansas, and Nevada.

Sleepy Orange butterflies are found year-round in southern and southwestern United States and in summer and fall can be found further north;  they are a rare stray to Ontario, Connecticut, South Dakota, and Colorado.

Red Admiral (Battus philenor)
Question Mark (Polygonia interrogationis)
Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma)

Red Admirals are widely distributed across temperate regions of North Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. They reside in warmer areas, but migrate north in spring and sometimes again in autumn.

The Eastern Comma is found in the Eastern half of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains from southern Canada to central Texas and the Gulf Coast.

The Question Mark butterfly is found throughout most of the eastern U.S. and southern Canada, south to north central Florida and the northern Gulf states, and west to Arizona, eastern Wyoming and Colorado.

Southern Dogface (Zerene cesonia)

The Southern Dogface butterfly lives year-round in Texas and Florida. It is a stray or temporary resident from central California northeast through the Great Lakes area and all the eastern states.

Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor)

The Pipevine Swallowtail has a wide distribution across the Northern Americas. In the United States, the butterfly is found in New England down to Florida west to Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Oregon. There is also an isolated population in midland California.

Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae)
Zebra Longwing (Heliconius charithonia)
Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia)
Julia Heliconian (Dryas iulia )

Zebra Longwings  appears all year in Florida and Texas and will travel to other northern states during warm months. (Click here to read more about these fascinating butterflies.)

Gulf Fritillaries are found primarily in the southern parts of the contiguous United States, from Florida to Texas and California. However, this butterfly’s range can extend from the Southern United States into parts of Mexico and Central America and sometimes as far as parts of South America. They are also found in Hawaii.

Variegated Fritillary can be found through Central America and Mexico to the southern United States; also Cuba and Jamaica. Regularly colonizes north through most of the United States except the Pacific Northwest.

The Julia Heliconian commonly called the Julia butterfly is native from Brazil to southern Texas and Florida, and in summer can sometimes be found as far north as eastern Nebraska.

Remember, you cannot have a butterfly without the caterpillar and you cannot have the caterpillar without that host plant. So plant lots of host plants. You can never have too many.

For a more comprehensive list of butterflies and their host plants, click here.

We tend to envision butterflies as delicate carefree creatures happily flitting from flower to flower and floating lazily through the sky to its next destination. But in reality, butterflies are quite tenacious in surviving the dangerous world they live in.

The fact is a butterfly’s life is not all that rosy. They are surrounded by predators from the time they begin their life as an egg, during the larva and pupa stage, and as an adult. Out of the hundreds of eggs one female will deposit during her lifetime, only a few survive to become adults. The butterfly’s ability to survive the many attacks it faces during its short life is what fascinates me about these iconic insects.

The adult butterfly uses many tactics to survive attacks from their many predators including birds, spiders, frogs, lizards, rats, dragonflies, hornets, wasps, and praying mantis.

Poison

Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed (Asclepias, spp.) As the caterpillars eat the milkweed leaves, they ingest chemicals called cardiac glycosides. The caterpillars sequester (hold on to) these toxins as they pupate, and the toxins are transferred to the adult butterflies. Birds or other creatures that eat the monarchs become sick, so they learn to leave both the butterflies and larvae alone.

Poisonous butterflies have flashy wings to reinforce the association between appearance and illness. For example, the bright orange colors of the Monarch are warning signs for vertebrates to stay away. Scientists call this aposematic coloration. Just as we humans learn that high-visibility vests and orange cones mean danger, birds and other predators learn that brightly colored monarchs are harmful to eat. Many different species of butterflies use aposematic coloration to protect themselves from predators.

Mimicry

Some butterflies simply fool their predators. As caterpillars, they feed on nontoxic plants, and when they become adult butterflies, they are perfectly good food. However, they have evolved wing colors and patterns that look almost exactly like those of the toxic species—a phenomenon called mimicry. Birds and lizards that have learned to avoid bold warning coloration and leave these imitators alone.

The Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor) caterpillar feeds on the Pipevine plant (Aristolochia). The Pipevine contains Aristolochic Acids which accumulate in the caterpillar and are transferred to the adult butterfly (sound familiar). This acid is highly toxic. Many species of local butterflies mimic the dark colored Pipevine Swallowtail including the Spice Bush Swallowtail (Papillio troilus),the Red Spotted Purple (Limennitis arthemis), the Eastern Black Swallowtail (Papillio polyxenes), and and the the dark morph form of the female Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glacucus).

Camouflage

Many butterflies protect themselves through camouflage. By folding up their wings, they reveal the undersides and blend in with their surroundings. Through this strategy, known as crypsis, they become nearly invisible to predators.

There are butterflies whose wings are designed to resemble vegetation or tree bark. Some species even have transparent wings. These adaptations serve as camouflage, making it easy for the insects to avoid predators by going unseen.

Flying Pattern

Butterflies are fast and erratic fliers. Their distinct fluttering motion makes it difficult for predators to determine where they will go next, making pursuit difficult.

Eyespots

There are some species that have enormous spots on their wings that resemble eyes. It’s thought that these eyespots mimic the eyes of predators, therefore, act as a deterrent to predators by making attackers think they are suddenly facing a larger and potentially dangerous animal.

Rather than preventing an attack entirely, another use for eyespots is to distract predators. The markings encourage an attacker to aim for parts of the insect’s body that aren’t vital for its survival – such as the edges of the wings. Attacks directed at the wing margins offer a higher chance of survival, as the insect would be able to survive with just a torn wing.

Scaled Wings and Wing Design

The scales that cover the wings of butterfly form some protection by making the wings slippery so when a predator tries to catch the butterfly, the butterfly can sometimes slip away. Most swallowtails have distinctive tails on their hind wings. These tail-like extensions of the hind wings can distract birds so that when the bird attacks it only is able to get a piece of the wing, allowing the butterfly to escape.

Mother Nature has unique ways to help protect these flying beauties!

When I was a young girl, I walked home from school one day and found a bush covered with ladybugs. I was fascinated by these little round red bugs and amazed at how friendly they were.

These tiny bugs actually allowed me to pick them up and hold them. They crawled on my arm and then they would open their red shells and reveal their wings and fly away. I must have lingered too long because my mother came walking up the street to see why I hadn’t arrived home.

I’m still fascinated by these little creatures. Last spring I was walking along the Jordon River in Riverton, Utah, USA. I was in search of Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) caterpillars. Thistle grows wild all along the banks of the river and in the spring the butterflies will lay their eggs on the leaves. To my uttermost delight, I not only found Painted Lady larva snug in their silken nests on the thistles, but I also found ladybugs. Lots of ladybugs!

The ladybug life cycle is not much different from the life cycle of a butterfly. The ladybug goes through the same four stages as a butterfly, the egg stage, the larva stage, the pupa stage, and the adult ladybug stage. That day along the river I was able to observe all four stages of the ladybug.

Ladybugs are one of my best friends in my butterfly garden! One ladybug will consume up to 50 to 60 aphids per day. Adult ladybugs, as well as the larva, will also eat a variety of other insects including scales, mealybugs, leafhoppers, mites, and various types of soft-bodied insects. Ladybugs are a very beneficial group of insects for your garden.

You can sometimes find Ladybugs to purchase from your local garden center. They can also be found online. One of my favorite activities as a teacher of young children was to read the book The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle (my personal favorite) and then take the children outside to have their very own experience with “friendly” ladybugs. I would place one bug on their hand and watch their faces light up with joy as they held the bug.

Gardening Know How provides the following tips for when purchasing ladybugs and keeping them in the garden:

First, realize that the same things that you do to attract butterflies will also help keep ladybugs in your yard. Making sure that there is food, shelter and water will go a long way to making your garden look like a good place to settle down and lay eggs (which means more ladybugs).

Second, you need to help give yourself a day or so to convince the ladybugs that your garden is a good place to live. When you receive your ladybugs, place them in the fridge for six to eight hours. This will slow them down (but will not kill them) and keep them from flying right off when you open the container.

Third, make sure you release them at the right time. Twilight hours are the best time to release ladybugs, as again, they will be likely to fly off. Right after dusk or right before dawn is the perfect time to let your ladybugs go.

Fourth, release the ladybugs in the right place. The easier you make it for them to find food and water, the faster they will figure out your yard is where they should stay. Choose either an aphid-infested plant or one of the flowering plants that ladybugs like. Gently water the plant so that the leaves have water on them. Then, release the ladybugs near it.

With these tips, attracting and keeping ladybugs in your garden can be a snap. You can enjoy the benefits of attracting ladybugs all summer long along with the butterflies!

Sometimes butterflies can be downright disgusting, especially male butterflies. Before you get upset with me, let me explain.

Male butterflies need salts and amino acids because it is believed these nutrients help aid their reproductive success. The dissolved salts and minerals are used to make sperm as well as pheromones that the males use to attract females. So male butterflies will congregate on wet sand and mud to absorb these minerals through their proboscis, the tube-like feeding structure of the butterfly (i.e., the proboscis, equated to a “tongue”). This behavior is called “mud-puddling” or simply “puddling”.

They not only like to sip from wet sand and mud, but male butterflies can also be found feeding on animal feces and even the rotting corpses of dead animals. That’s right! It drives them wild. They uncoil their proboscis and slurp away, lapping up the salts and amino acids they can’t get from flowers. Think of this behavior as going to the local pub to enjoy imbibing with mates.

A trick many professional butterfly photographers use to attract butterflies is to urinate on a dead fish. Seriously. I understand that butterflies especially like human urine because of the high salt content. When the butterflies are puddling, they are so absorbed in what they are doing that it makes it easier to approach them and get closer to them without them flying away.

Rotting animal flesh is a huge butterfly favorite, so much so that researchers have begun baiting tropical butterfly traps with shrimp heads, chunks of a dead snake, and prawn paste. “Traps were baited and checked for cycles of five days, with extra bait added each day to ensure a range of decay,” wrote one scientist in her report. Butterfly researchers really don’t get enough credit. (See http://mentalfloss.com/article/63521/7-disgusting-things-butterflies-eat)

Click here or on the photo below to learn how to make a puddling station in your butterfly garden.