Butterfly Gardening in Missouri

Butterflies are beautiful to watch, their colors, the way they flit and fly, and sip nectar from the flowers you planted. That's reason enough to attract them to your garden. But the benefits of planting a butterfly garden are much broader than that. Butterfly gardens benefit other pollinators which help your vegetable garden and fruit trees. Many butterfly garden plants provide food and nesting for birds. Caterpillars provide the protein snack that birds need to feed their young and to migrate long distances.

Support the butterfly lifecycle with host plants and nectar plants

For a butterfly to compete its lifecycle, the adult butterfly eats flower nectar or the juices of fallen fruit.  The female lays her eggs on specific plants that she smells with her feet to make sure it's the right one that her caterpillars will need to eat in order to grow, molt and grow some more. Most people know that the Monarch caterpillar needs to eat Milkweed. But all butterfly species have their own particular plants that their caterpillars need to eat. These are called their host plant. You can look at the butterfly list in the link below to see what host plants each butterfly needs.

Provide a habitat network for pollinators

Planting native plants, and encouraging your neighbors to do so as well, provides a network of habitat for butterflies, birds and other pollinators. There may be a fence between you and your neighbor, but a butterfly can get nectar from your garden and hop the fence to lay eggs in your neighbor's garden. The lifecycle is supported by this pearl necklace of habitat oases.

Learn about your local wildlife and the native plants they depend on

This guide is intended as a starter kit for all gardeners who have a garden in the sun, large or small, or a patio with planters, or even something as small as a window box. The PDF in the link below is a list of plants you can choose to get a quick payoff of butterflies in your Missouri or Illinois garden. It's not a comprehensive list. I chose my favorite butterflies to attract, but gave you resources at the end to seek more information once you get inspired to go farther.

Here is a link to the PDF of my list of native midwest plants that attract and sustain butterflies of Missouri:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1J85lJOaDItYkJPLUVuVWkxb2s/view?usp=sharing

For gardeners in other areas of the country or the world, there are some resources in the right side of this blog that can get you started. Over there, look! =>

Luna Moths Need Black Walnut, Hickory Trees and Dark Skies

Luna Moth (from Wikipedia)

Two decades ago when I moved to our house in Arlington, Virginia, a Luna Moth took up residence for a couple of days among the moon flowers and morning glories climbing up the bean trellis. Since I was new to Virginia as well as the neighborhood, I assumed Luna Moths were a common occurrence that I would be able to enjoy in my new home. That turned out not to be true, and I’ve only seen two, both more than a decade ago.

 

The Luna Moth, Actias luna, is a lime-green swallowtail with a wingspan of four and a half inches, making it one of the largest North American moths.  Its preferred larval host trees in our area are the walnuts and hickories, but it will also use sweet gum and persimmon trees.  Up north, they go for birch, alder and sumac.  The trees are not damaged by the caterpillars.  After eating their fill of leaves and transforming through five instars (life cycle phases or molts), the caterpillars drop to the ground at the base of the tree, wrap themselves in silk and leaf litter, and pupate.

 

Luna Moths face many challenges to survival in the urban sprawl.  They require dark skies to reproduce.  They fly up to the tops of the host trees well after midnight to mate and lay eggs.  There is evidence that the bright lights from streetlights and buildings interfere with the moth’s ability to reproduce. They are also becoming endangered by the measures to control Gypsy Moths.  

While I haven’t read anything about the effect of leaf collection on Lepidoptera, it seems logical to me that our obsession with raking, mowing and blowing our yards clean has had the effect of sweeping away the pupated moths and butterflies as they undergo the miracle of metamorphosis at our feet.   [for more information on supporting wildlife by leaving in place the  leaves, seedheads and leaf stalks that insects, birds and small mammals depend on, see this post by Pat Sutton "A Love of Untidy Gardens and Why!" on the website Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens]

Finally, as our neighborhood’s original native tree cover is aging and disappearing, we are not replacing them with the species that the local fauna require for food, shelter and reproduction. Maybe we can help keep these beauties around by planting native hosts, leaving some leaf litter each fall, especially at the base of walnuts, hickories and sweet gums, and turning off unnecessary lights at night.

 

For more information on native landscaping for wildlife, have a look at the links on the right =>

Update May 27, 2012: We went for a walk this morning at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Virginia. On the path of the forested area near the edge of the wetlands, I saw a Luna Moth. It was the first one I have seen in almost 20 years.