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| Annuals & Perennials | Butterfly Gardening with Native Nurseries |
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| Butterfly Gardening | Nectar Food Plants to Entice and Nourish Butterflies If you only have room for four, plant: |
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| Container Gardening |
| Ferns | One: Butterfly Bush → Buddleia spp. The foundation of the butterfly garden; lavender, white, pink or purple flowers all summer and fall; cut back in late February or early March for best results. |
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| Two: Pentas ↑ Pentas lanceolata In Tallahassee pentas can easily be grown as an annual, but will usually serve as a perennial if heavily mulched over winter. It is slow to come back in the spring, so you might want add one or two new ones for the butterflies until the plants from previous years sprout. Pink or red are the best. |
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| Three: Lantana ↑ Lantana camara Cold hardy perennial (in Tallahassee) that disappears in winter but comes back consistently in spring; many colors and heights to choose from; prune two or three times through the season for optimum blooming. |
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Four: ← Firebush Hamelia patens Native to south Florida but a tender perennial in Tallahassee, bright orange flowers on a shrub with pretty foliage. Donna reports that hers comes back every year. Particularly enjoyed by zebra longwings. |
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More Nectar Food Plants . . . Wildflowers, Herbs, Perennials and Annuals: |
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| Purple Coneflower Perennial Salvias Red Sage Liatris Catmint Coreopsis Bottlebrush Buckeye Homestead Verbena |
Scarlet Milkweed Narrowleaf Sunflower Anise Hyssop Phlox Silphium Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) Mexican Bush Sage Pineapple Sage Mist Flower |
Stoke's Aster Other Asters Butterfly Weed Verbenas Zinnia Goldenrod Ironweed Ageratina |
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| Larval Food Plants for Some of the Butterflies You will Likely see in Tallahassee: |
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Black Swallowtail—parsley, dill, fennel, rue, native snakeroot (Eryngium) Giant Swallowtail—rue, citrus, hoptree, Hercules' club Pipevine Swallowtail—pipevine Spicebush Swallowtail—redbay, sweetbay, spicebush, sassafras Tiger Swallowtail—tulip poplar, cherry, willow Zebra Swallowtail—pawpaw Palamedes Swallowtail—redbay, sweetbay, sassfras Monarch, Queen—milkweed Gulf Fritillary, Zebra Longwing—passionvine Variegated Fritillary—passionvine, wild violets Common Buckeye—Agalinis, snapdragon American Lady—cudweed Red Admiral—false nettle Viceroy—willows Red-spotted Purple—willow, hawthorn, cherry Cloudless Sulphur, Orange-barred Sulphur, Sleepy Orange, Little Yellow—Senna, Partridge Pea Southern Dogface—Leadplant or Indigo Shrub (Amorpha) Hackberry Emperor, Tawny Emperor, American Snout, Question Mark—Hackberry Long-tailed Skipper—legumes, native wisteria |
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Click here for information about Native Nurseries' Butterfly Rearing Cage It's a fun Butterfly Project for the whole family. View/print the PDF version of Native Nurseries' Butterfly Gardening Handout. Check out our Butterfly Workshops. |