Butterflies Need More Than Nectar

Checkered skipper on Sida ulmifolia

Polydamas swallowtail on a nonnative pipevine

Common buckeye on a false foxglove - Agalinus spp.

Cassius blue

Snout butterfly

Eastern black swallowtail

As my landscape continues to develop, I'm ever-increasing my ability to provide for butterflies. Since my early childhood, I've been enthralled by them and that love has only grown as I've aged. I've done my best to design my new landscape to accommodate as many species as possible, but it is still a work in progress. As our focus often seems to be on the decline of monarchs, we sometimes lose focus that monarchs are really only a miner's canary - their decline signals a decline in all invertebrates worldwide and all of them need our attention.
Pollinators need much more than nectar and pollen. In a world gone mad with pesticides, they need a safe place away from them. Here in Florida, where the landscape focus seems directed at "interesting" plants and those from tropical climates, they need simple flowers to nectar from - especially wildflowers meant to be pollinated. But what seems often to be lost is the need to raise a family. Without the ability to reproduce, no pollinator can last more than a few weeks. They have very short lifespans.
Butterflies need their host plants and the vast majority of these are rarely purposely planted by the vast sea of suburban and urban gardeners. Through a huge public relations push, a great many are now planting milkweeds. I've done that too and I see adults and caterpillars daily in my landscape. What I've also done, however, is to plant for the other guys.....
Butterfly gardening is so much easier, with quicker results, than gardening for songbirds. It simply requires us to add the plant(s) that serve their caterpillars and wait; often no more than a few days. As long as we are not living in an ocean of pesticides, the time it takes for a female butterfly to find a suitable host plant is often quick.
Although I am a champion of native plants, sometimes the plants I've added are not native - if they contribute to my living landscape. For weeks, I've observed cassius blues nectaring from my wildflowers in the backyard, but I did not have its host plant so that I could actually raise them. I rectified this last week by adding a nonnative blue plumbago (Plumbago auriculata). Over the years, I have found that this species is a better host than our native plumbago (P. zeylanica) and it is much prettier to my eye as well. Since then, the number of sightings I've had of this butterfly have increased. I left the mock bishop's weed (Ptilimnium capillacium) alone in my nursery pots, but the eastern black swallowtails have not shown up. I've got curled parsley for them still as the native has died back for another year. I've left a common fantails (Sida ulmifolia) alone in a corner of the yard to do its thing as it serves as the host plant for checkered skippers. It is a lawn weed with a purpose, but I don't let it spread elsewhere. I've also been seeing polydamas swallowtails fluttering about the backyard lately. Somewhere in the neighborhood, someone must have a pipevine (Aristolochia spp.) because I don't. I'm trying to rectify that now. I recently purchased the seeds of 4 different nonnative species that serve as suitable hosts for both of our pipevine-dependent swallowtails. Contrary to what a great many folks here write, there are nonnative pipevines suitable for both the pipevine and the polydamas swallowtails. The native species do not do well here where I live.
I measure my landscaping success by the diversity of species I document living out their lives in it. It is not enough to "attract" them, like a sideshow for us to gawk at for a few minutes. A living landscape provides the conditions to support life - in all of its stages. We match our plants to the life we wish to best support. It's not about the intrigue of leaf shapes and colors as so many folks in certain Facebook groups fall all over themselves about in their posts. It is not about creating "friendly" landscapes if we are to succeed; it's about creating living ones.