Eastern Comma on Arm

hi diohio
lovely set of pics.do you get all those butterflies in your garden?must be wonderful in summer.i am growing several different buddlehias to attract as many as i can , what plants do your butterflies like?
steve

Thanks Steve. Yes, I get bunches and bunches of butterflies in my gardens, but I've been working on it for about 10 years now. You should get yourself a really good butterfly field guide. Maybe ask around which butterflies are in your part of the country, or try to read about them. You can get butterflies to come to your garden by planting good nectar flowers but if you want to KEEP them there, or have them come back, you need to find out what host plants each butterfly needs. Each different butterfly requires different host plants (usually)......that means ones they will lay their eggs on so when the larvae hatch, they will be able to eat the plant. For example a Monarch larva will only eat a milkweed species plant..........a Great Spangled Fritillary will only eat violets or pansy............Painted Ladies will eat thistles, nettles, hollyhock, sunflower, elm, burdock, groundsel, pearly everlasting, sage, and mallow. Some butterflies are picky about which flowers they like to nectar from also, so you should just do some research first before buying plants. Buddleia is a very good start. Quite a few like to nectar from that. Oh, you can also find good sites online.......just do a search on Google or similar and type in "Butterfly host plants". I've printed out several lists from online. One site lists host plants and also favorite nectar plants for specific butterflies. You can try this one.......I printed this out years ago so I don't know if it's still up... http://www.baylink.org/host_nec.html
Hope this helps.
Diane

It helps me, thanks Diohio :)