PLANTS FOR LOS ANGELES BUTTERFLY GARDENS       SOME NECTAR PLANTS NATIVE TO THE LOS ANGELES AREA  

  SOME CATERPILLAR PLANTS NATIVE TO THE LOS ANGELES AREA       NURSERIES CARRYING PLANTS NATIVE TO LOS ANGELES AREA

CHARMLEE  BUTTERFLY GARDEN

SUGGESTIONS FOR L.A. BUTTERFLY GARDENERS

Margaret Huffman

with additions from Trish Meyer.

A butterfly garden can do several things. Perhaps most important, it can add to your enjoyment of nature and that of your friends and family. It can attract many different kinds of butterflies or attract bees and other pollinators as well as butterflies. You can use it to raise butterflies or help children learn about nature. And a butterfly garden can help restore the natural environment.

Undoubtedly you think butterflies are very beautiful creatures, with their bright colors and graceful flight. No doubt you also know you'll have even more fun if you can identify some of the more common ones -- perhaps you already know them! The first step is to help you get acquainted with the butterflies you can expect to attract. Next, we'll identify plants that may attract these butterflies.

Los Angeles ought to have lots of butterflies because it's semi-tropical, and, indeed, more than 100 kinds of butterflies live in the Los Angeles area. Several entomologists have done extensive field work around Los Angeles. Luckily, two of them have supplied us with useful publications. Rudi Mattoni's The Butterflies of Greater Los Angeles shows more than 100 species and notes which is likely to come to your garden by showing a G immediately following the butterfly's name. He includes other useful information such as the flight time and the butterfly's food plant.

Julian Donahue's recent Butterfly Gardening in Southern California (published by the Natural History Museum) includes lovely photos of the most common butterflies and several likely to be found in nearby wild areas. It also discusses useful plants for L.A. butterfly gardens. I recommend both of these publications without hesitation.

GARDEN BUTTERFLIES

Here's a list of butterflies that frequent Los Angeles parks and home gardens:

1. Anise Swallowtail
2. Western Tiger Swallowtail
3. Cabbage White
4. Checkered White
5. Orange Sulfur
6. Cloudless Sulfur
7. Sleepy Orange
8. Monarch
9. Gulf Fritillary
10. Red Admiral
11. Painted Lady
12. West Coast Lady
13. American Lady
14. Mourning Cloak
15. Common Buckeye
16. Gray Hairstreak
17. Marine Blue
18. Fiery Skipper
19. Umber Skipper
20. Funereal Duskywing
21. White Checkered-skipper

        Many people who enjoy butterflies catch them in nets so they can examine them at close range. Doing this without damaging delicate wings takes skill. Other people look at them through binoculars the way bird-watchers look at birds. As you notice butterflies more, you'll become more skillful at identifying them at a distance -- by general appearance, flight characteristics and habits.

Several garden butterflies may confuse people because they look similar to one another. Sometimes you'll need to look carefully to see the differences that distinguish them:

Western Tiger Swallowtail has lengthwise black stripes and is larger and more yellow than Anise Swallowtail.

Cloudless Sulfur is obviously larger than Orange Sulfur and floats or glides without flapping.

Note: Butterfly watchers use standard terminology to describe butterflies:

Forewings Forewings are the pair near the head; hindwings are the other pair.

West Coast Lady seems like a slightly smaller Painted Lady and the large blotch on the forewing is creamy yellow or light orange, not white.

More terminology: Butterfly watchers call the side of the butterfly that includes its legs under side; scientists also call it the ventral side. Upper side refers to the side that includes its back; scientists also call it the dorsal side.

American Lady also looks like a Painted Lady but it has two big spots on the under hind wing.

Checkered White looks like a smaller Cabbage White but it keeps closer to plants. Its underwings have checkered edges.

Umber Skipper flies like a Fiery Skipper, but is darker and slightly larger.

Being able to identify common butterflies makes butterfly-watching more fun. At the same time, knowing the butterflies helps you plan your butterfly garden. I'll discuss why this is true in a moment.

There 5 times more butterflies around Los Angeles than those I've listed, and some may visit your garden for brief periods, especially if you are near the wild place they live in. The striking Pale Swallowtail may wander in from brush-covered hills and mountains -- the chaparral and woodland. Variable Checkerspot likes monkeyflowers growing along streams in the chaparral. Wild stands of buckwheat often host Square-spotted Blue or Mormon Metalmark. Pretty little Sara Orangetips may flit in from uncultivated fields. Lovely Lorquin's Admiral lives around willow-lined streams, while look-alike California Sister stays near oak woodlands.

PLANTS FOR L.A. BUTTERFLY GARDENS

A butterfly garden needs two kinds of plants:

1) those whose flowers supply nectar for adult butterflies, and

2) those that supply food for butterfly caterpillars.

These are frequently not the same plants.

NECTAR PLANTS

Many kinds of flowers can supply nectar for adult butterflies. The main requirements are for a surface the butterfly can perch on or cling to while feeding, lots of nectar and easy access to the nectar. For example, butterflies will sip from the flower of a wild rose, which is like an open cup, but they cannot get through the many, folded petals to the nectar of cultivated roses. In addition to having accessible nectar and good perching or clinging surfaces, good nectar plants produce abundant blooms to make it easy for butterflies to find and use the nectar.

Plants whose flowers supply abundant, accessible nectar and good perching or clinging surfaces are called nectar plants. Unlike people, butterflies really don't care whether the flowers are pretty or especially showy.

Many plants meet these requirements. I've included a few of the more popular ones on the first table. I've noted several of them with a C: to indicate that they are cultivars. You'll find these in commercial nurseries because they have been bred over the years for garden cultivation and are easy to grow. Probably the simplest way to get started on a butterfly garden is to plant one or a few of these, if you don't grow them already.

I've also noted several plants with an N: to indicate that they are native to the Los Angeles area. They are all excellent nectar plants and I've included them for additional reasons that will become clear in a moment.

CATERPILLAR PLANTS

We all know that butterflies emerge from pupae (cases) that caterpillars make to protect themselves while they change from caterpillars to beautiful adults.

Caterpillars eat plants or parts of plants like buds or blossoms, but not just any plant will grow a healthy adult butterfly. Caterpillars of a particular kind of butterfly thrive only on particular kinds of plants. Therefore, you'll have much more consistent success in attracting butterflies if you include their caterpillar plants as well as plants supplying nectar for adult butterflies.

Caterpillars of almost all L.A. garden butterflies require plants native to southern California, or close relatives of these plants, to thrive. This is because most plants contain poisons to defend themselves from being eaten. For example, oaks contain tannins, which are bitter substances the California Indians learned to remove before they prepared food from acorn meal.

Over millions of years, particular species of caterpillars adapted to tolerate the poisons in particular plants. Thus, milkweeds contain poisonous alkaloids that evolution equipped Monarch caterpillars to tolerate. These alkaloids make Monarch caterpillars and adults distasteful to birds and other predators.

Caterpillars of another kind of butterfly, such as Anise Swallowtail, can't tolerate the poisons in milkweeds but can tolerate poisons in another kind of plant, such as members of the parseley family.

It shouldn't be surprising, then, that caterpillars of most kinds of butterflies native to the Los Angeles area require particular kinds of native plants thrive. The main reason we have so few butterflies is because we have wiped out so many of the native plants their caterpillars need.

This is true of many other insects. In general, a native plant supports several times more species of insects and other fauna like birds and mammals than a cultivar supports. In fact, lots of cultivars have been bred because of their resistance to insects, butterfly caterpillars included!

The tragedy is that we DON'T KNOW what most of the interactions are among the native plants and the insects, birds and other creatures that depend on them and may never know if we continue to destroy the native habitats.

Most L.A. gardeners come from somewhere else, are unfamiliar with our local natives and rely on the nursery trade for imported cultivars. This means that few nurseries stock native plants. To help those of you who want to grow natives, I've noted where you can find the ones I mention.

Many caterpillar plants are also nectar plants, so you can get 2-for-1, that is, support both adult butterflies and caterpillars with the same plant. The second table lists some of the best of these. Also shown are the caterpillars the plant feeds.

I've also made a table of plants that are strictly caterpillar plants because several of these support caterpillars, like the Red Admiral, Mourning Cloak, and Common Buckeye, that don't appear on the dual-purpose list.

Many more butterfly-friendly plants than those on the tables are native to the Los Angeles area. I've attached a supplementary list of these for those of you who are interested in native plants and want to help all of our wild creatures by growing them.

PLANTS FOR LOS ANGELES BUTTERFLY GARDENS

Margaret Huffman

I. STRICTLY NECTAR PLANTS

Note: C = cultivar; N = Native to southern California