To Make Butterfly Love
I love butterflies and I’ve never heard of anyone stating the opposite. Who wouldn’t be touched, stunned and fascinated by these beautiful and multicolored creatures?
I remember having a lot of butterflies in my lost garden. Though it wasn’t entirely my doing - I had a plant school as a neighbour and they drawn a lot of butterfly species over to my garden too :-)
I’m sure that some of the butterflies wasn’t even common in our country, they had sort of “hitchhiked” with the big transport of flowers from the Netherlands they got. (Together with the spiders!)
I know, that if I ever get an own garden again, I will definitely plant a lot of flowers to make it to a paradise for the butterflies!
It’s just a matter of having enough of different plants which produces nectar and provides blooming flowers from mid to late summer, because that’s when most butterflies are active. In the southern Sweden butterflies is active during May-September.
Did you know that butterflies can see the color of the flowers? Plants that is established for butterflies visits has certain colors and pattern, especially those that produce nectar has visible spot, honey signs. They can even smell the scent and is testing if they are tasty!
Butterflies don’t just suck on any flower - oh no, they are connoisseur’s like myself - they often prefer certain plant species or choose after what the season has to offer. Some prefer rotten rised fruits, sap from newly fallen trees or even excrements or rotten cheese. (Not my taste exactly…)
A butterfly’s lifetime is on average 2-5 weeks. The male butterfly usually has a shorter lifetime than the female and very often he dies after the mating. (Sorry guys ;-)
There probably is as much stunningly beautiful butterflies as there is flowers, if not more. However, as long as I stay in Sweden, I’ll never ever be able to attract any Hummingbirds with any plants, since we don’t have them over here ;-(
The photos below are butterflies we’ve spotted at the islands Fårö and Gotland outside Swedens east coast.
[Click to enlarge pic and get facts]
Some useful links about Butterfly Gardening:
Fact sheets about Butterfly Gardening
Creating a Butterfly Friendly Garden
Butterfly Gardening
Butterfly Garden Plants (They even have a table for which butterfly caterpillar eating which plant!)
