My Montevideo Native Pollinator Garden

My Montevideo Native Pollinator Garden

For the last three years I've been studying the native butterflies of Montevideo and the plants they depend on for larval host plants and nectar plants. As I find the plants in nurseries or at friends' houses, I'm documenting the plants so others can find these plants and use them to design their own garden for butterflies, bees and the the rest of the ecosystem that these plants support. This garden plan should work well in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, and in surrounding areas of Montevideo such as Canelones and Maldonado.

While I acquired the plants at several different locations, the design was drawn and planted by Remi at Vivero Parati in Toledo Chico, Montevideo.

See my post "Montevideo Butterfly Garden Design" for a list of nurseries where I have bought native plants.

Check back here often. I'll be adding all of the native plants in my garden over the next six months.

The Plants

Dicliptera tweediana, "Canario Rojo"

Dicliptera tweediana is a small upright perennial herb native to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Its common name is Canario Rojo. Sometimes it's called Dicliptera squarrosa. There are some really good photos of it over on the blog Flora Bonaerense. It flowers in spring and fall and gets to be up to one meter tall. The flowers attract pollinators and hummingbirds. Hummingbirds this summer are most avidly visiting the Dicliptera and the Salvia guaranitica.

Canario Rojo likes wetter locations and lots of sun. Mine is doing fine in a border bed next to the lawn that receives daily sprinkler watering and afternoon sun. Deadhead the spent flowers to extend the flowering period, and cut back in the fall. This plants roots easily from cuttings. I think it self-seeds as well. I just found some seedlings in the side yard where the potted plant was stored until I got around to planting it in the butterfly garden.

Canario Rojo is host plant to two butterflies, the Mbatara' or Batara' (Ortilia ithra) and the Princesa Roja (Anartia amathea roeselia), according to Proyecto Panambi'.

In Mariposas de Uruguay, (Bentancur, Gabriela. (2011). Mariposas del Uruguay, Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay) it is noted that both of these butterflies can also lay their eggs successfully on Ruellia species.

This plant was hard to buy in Uruguay. Most nurseries don't have it. I was able to find it at Area Indigena in Balneario Solis. Silvia now sells out of her private nursery called Yosinama in Barrio Pinares, Maldonado. She can be found on Facebook as Yosinama Gardens, where she lists her cell phone number as 098821306.

Ruellia simplex, "Ruellia"

Ruellia simplex is native to Uruguay. Its common name in English is Mexican petunia or wild petunia, although it's not a petunia at all. It's found in wet areas, so it likes a wetter area in your garden as well.  The fantastic purple flowers bloom for a day and then fall off. A new set blooms the next day. This goes on for months in spring and summer. The fuzzy stems are green to burgundy.  The true green leaves have a tiny bit of the burgundy all around the rim. It's a truly gorgeous plant. It self-seeds easily with explosive seeds, and spreads by rhizome. These qualities make the plant invasive, and Ruellia will increase the size of its clump each year. You can cut it back or divide it in autumn or winter and share it with a friend. The hearty aggressiveness of Ruellia makes is quite invasive in other countries, where the butterflies that depend on it to nourish their caterpillars are not present. 

As stated in the entry above, Ruellia and Canario Rojo are host plants for caterpillars of the Batara' and Princesa Roja butterflies. This plant is available in nurseries in Uruguay.


Passiflora caerulea, "Mburucuya"

 Passiflora caerulea is known in English as blue passionflower. This and other Passion flower species are found throughout North and South America, where the local versions of the plant are usually the main host plant of the local population of the butterfly Agraulis vanillae known in English as the Gulf Fritillary or in Spanish as Espejitos.

Female Espejitos butterflies lay their eggs on the leaves or tendrils of the Mburucuya plant. The eggs hatch several days later and the tiny caterpillars eat the leaves, molting several times as they grow. Finally, the last molt converts them to a chrysalis that looks like a dead brown leaf hanging on a branch or a nearby wall.  After a few weeks the butterfly will emerge from the chrysalis and start the cycle again.



This Uruguayan species of passionflower is locally called Mburucuya. It's a woody vine with the fringed purple and white flower that gives it its name.  The fruit is edible. I have been growing this on a bamboo trellis in my garden for two years but have only gotten a couple of flowers and no fruit yet. The bright orange Espejitos butterflies visit it frequently and its caterpillars are eating it to death. The only solution is to plant more of it for them. It's hard to find in nurseries. They will usually try to sell you a Brazilian species with much larger, thicker leaves, because it also produces larger fruit.  But the local butterflies in Montevideo truly prefer the delicate palmate leaves of this local species.

I was able to buy some prepared cuttings of this vine at the nursery called Vivero Pachamama.  It's located on Av. Giannattasio in Pinar Sur, Canelones, Uruguay. Call ahead to make sure they have it in stock.

Seeds for Mburucuya are available from Psamofila, a new native seed company in Punta del Este. Check their Facebook or Instagram to find out where to buy the seeds in Montevideo.

Salvia uliginosa, "Bog Sage"

This 1.5 meter tall perennial sage has lovely little sky blue flowers that come and go on a spike. The delicate leaves are light green. The plant grows in a clump and spreads a little each year. It can be cut back to the ground in winter. It regrows from the roots in spring. You can get more blooms by cutting back spent spikes in summer. It grows well in full sun. The flowering season is quite long: winter, summer and fall. While I haven't found that this plant is a butterfly host plant, it is very useful to pollinators. The bees absolutely love it. In winter, little wrens have been eating the seeds from the spent flower stalks.

This plant works well in clumps because the bees like to just bumble from flower to flower without having to go too far from one to the other. It looks nice with clumps of other plants around it in different colored foliage and different heights.  In this picture the bog sage is surround by a clump of vira vira (grey leaves with white button flowers), rue (olive foliage with yellow flowers) and Ruellia (dark green leaves with deep purple flowers). See above for more information on Ruellia.

Salvia guaranitica, Black and Blue Sage or Hummingbird Sage

 This perennial herb is shorter than the bog sage, above, but its flowers are larger, the blue color is intense, and they flowers are contrasted with a black calyces.  The leaves are much larger than bog sage, a deeper green and heart-shaped.

They have an extremely long flowering season. We just passed the winter solstice and these plants still have flowers on them. They must not have any more nectar because the hummingbirds have stopped visiting them. But in the summer and fall, the hummingbirds were crazy for this plant. I only had two of them at the time, and I am certain that the hummingbirds, after checking out all of the flowers, would look at me as if to say, "Where are the rest of them? You didn't plant enough!" So I planted some more.

I bought some of these at Vivero Musacco and some by accident from someone else. They just bloomed one day on the edge of the bog sage and I was blown away by this plant.

Like the bog sage, this sage can be pruned in summer to encourage more blooms, and cut to the ground in late winter. Divide the clumps every few years if they spread too much. They are very hardy and do well in full sun and moist soil.

This is a good nectar flower for butterflies and bees.  The bumblebees can't fit inside the flower so they try to get at the nectar from the outside base of the flower where it meets the black calyx.

I read in several nursery guides that this sage has an anise scent, but I didn't notice it.  I also read that it had medicinal value as a sedative.





Salvia procurrens, Creeping Sage

This cute little sage is a ground cover with small light blue flowers very similar to the bog sage. Its round leaves spread out along runner stems and will cover a garden bed in weeks.  If it gets out of hand, and out of the bed, which it will, it's very easy to just pick up the end and pull it out or cut it back at the edge. Anything you cut or pull can be placed on the ground somewhere else and it will take root easily.

The flowers are visited by bees. Small birds forage for seeds under the leaves.




Senecio vira-vira, Vira-vira

Vira-vira is native to Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, although it is very popular in the USA and UK, where it is known as Dusty Miller.

This perennial evergreen subshrub is in the Aster family. It's small white button flowers are very attractive to butterflies and other pollinators. Cut back the flower stalks after blooming to give the plant a nice silver mounding shape.

This plant does well in full sun and dry soil. It forms a mound about and half meter high and a meter wide. Some garden websites recommend removing the flowers because they aren't showy, but the flowers are the reason to have this plant in a pollinator garden.




Verbena bonariensis, Tall Verbena

 This local verbena is one of the tallest perennials in my pollinator garden.  It's not terribly showy, and the lavender flowers are really tiny.  It's listed on all the local pollinator lists as a must have because it's an important nectar plant for bees and butterflies.

The fact that it's tall and leggy, with slender sparse leaves, makes it a good plant for a back border, or as a sheer curtain.  This plant doesn't block other plants that are behind it. I didn't prune the verbena much this year unless it got brown and unsightly.  Tall Verbena will self seed if you leave the seeds on the plant to ripen.  I've done this so I'll probably get lots of seedlings in the spring.  Right now we are in mid winter, and I've noticed that it is starting to sprout at the upper levels of the stems. I don't want this to happen because it won't have a good shape next summer: too top heavy I think, with lots of spent woody stems.  If I prune the plant down low, it will resprout from the base instead of the tall stems.

Tall Verbena grows well in full sun and moist but not boggy soil. It will tolerate part shade as well.

If Tall Verbena is self-seeding around your garden where you don't want it, once you recognize the seedlings, it is easy to pull them out before they set seed.












Eupatorium macrocephalum, Pompom Weed

Eupatorium macrocephalum is common in fields and roadsides in Uruguay, but few people actually plant it in their gardens. It's a tall perennial that spreads by rhizome. In the winter the stalk dries up but has cute little button seeds on top. You can cut the stalks down to the ground in winter.  The plant will regenerate in spring as small rosettes emerging from the ground.  These will get nice and bushy, with fuzzy lanceolate leaves and fuzzy purplish stems.  Then suddenly they will sprout up, seemingly overnight to twice their height.  After this they will produce these lovely flowers that attract bees and butterflies for their nectar.  With their height, soft stems and large flowers, some of the stalks can tip over.  I cut them back and that stimulated some new flowers to grow.

Eupatorium macrocephalum is allelopathic, meaning it puts out chemicals that suppress the growth of other plants around it.  I haven't seen this yet, as I've only had it one year. Once you recognize the rosettes, if they get too numerous, they are very easy to pull out.

Another local native plant in the same genus is Eupatorium inulifolium. It has white flowers and a lovely perfume and attracts even more bees and butterflies that the purple variety, I've noticed.  I actually ordered E. inulifolium from my nursery, and was surprised to see it bloom purple.  A little research led me to the conclusion that I had in fact received E. macrocephalum.

Here's a photo of the leaves. This is several plants seen from above. Remember to group clumps of the same plant together.  It looks nice and it helps the birds and insects locate the plant and easily jump from flower to flower for its nectar.

These flowering plants in the aster family used to be in the same genus as Joe Pye Weed, Eupatorium maculatum. But recently, many of the 800 species in the genus Eupatorium have been moved to other genuses.  Joe Pye Weed is now called Eutrochium maculatum, and I've seen Pompom Weed listed as Campuloclinum macrocephalum. There have been a lot of changes in the scientific names of plants in the last couple of years due to advancements in genetic studies.

Baccharis trimera, Carqueja

Carqueja is one of the most recognized plants in Uruguay.  It is a small perennial subshrub in the aster family. Native to most of South America, it is often seen along roadsides and in the prairie landscape.  It has bright green leaf matter all the way down the stem to the base, and the leaf matter is separated into three wings. The stems are segmented and the flowers emerge at the segment. The small cream-colored composite flowers are fragrant and attract pollinators.

Carqueja grows readily in flower gardens and vegetable gardens. It reaches about 70 cm and will form a clump that gets larger each year. It is easily divided and transplanted to other areas.

This plant is prized in Uruguay for its medicinal value.  Uruguayans add a 2 cm length of stem in their thermos of hot water used for making yerba mate.  They will tell you that it helps with digestion and liver function. There are many studies showing that it has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic, antihepatotoxic and analgesic effects.





NOTE: During 2019 I will be updating this post with photos and descriptions of the ecological value of all the native plants in my Montevideo native plant garden.
Upcoming plants will include:


Begonia cucullata
Solanum
Solidago
Aspilia montevidensis
Cestrum parquii
Asclepias
Aristolochia littoralis
Duranta
Araza'
Ipomoea alba
Ruta
Combretum
Oxalis
Yerba Mate, Ilex paraguariensis
Marcela, Achyrocline satureioides

Annual Herbs

Vines

Perennial Herbs
Malva parviflora
Nicotiana alata
Glandularia dissecta


Sub-Shrubs
Cafecillo, Senna scabriuscula

Woody Shrubs
Lantana camara
Pitanga
Rama Negra, Senna corymbosa (evergreen)
Chirca, Eupatorium buniifolium
Guayabo del Pais, Acca sellowiana (evergreen)
Jazmin del Uruguay, Guettarda uruguensis (evergreen)
Plumerillo Rosado, Calliandra parvifolia
Cedron del Monte, Aloysia gratissima

Trees
Lapacho Rosado, Tabebuia heptaphylla
Espinillo
Coronilla
Anacahuita, Schinus molle
Ceibo
Palo Borracho