It's Much More Than Nectar

Skippers on Camphorweed (Pluchea spp.)
Photo by Trudy Kenderdine & used by permission

I love working with kids and since I've assumed the role of Director at the University of South Florida Botanical Gardens I often have the opportunity to take kids of all ages on guided walks.  One of first stops is always at the "Butterfly Garden".  I call it that, because it came with that sign when I first started there last year,  so it must be so... In truth, it was a terrible butterfly garden until we started to fix it - and that leads me back to the kids and guided walks.

I enjoy asking questions that require critical thinking; often questions that I don't expect anyone to correctly answer.  It's golden when someone does, but that's never the point.  I ask questions that I hope will stimulate thinking.  In this case, and most others, that means questions meant to stimulate thinking about the natural world and why things are the way they are.  At the entrance to the "Butterfly Garden" I always ask the same question: "What do butterflies need most of all"? In essence - what makes for a true butterfly garden?  When I ask kids this question, I always get the same answers.  "They need nectar"! and when I say that is not the most important thing, they add that "they need pollen".  It's clear to me that most kids are taught these 2 simple answers and that they've never been challenged to think about it. Of course, the answer I want to leave them with is that they need host plants for their children.

Perhaps it's a fear of teaching kids about sex that causes teachers and parents to avoid teaching them this answer.  It's not a complicated one; not any more than teaching them about nectar and pollen.  When I answer my question with this, I often see the teachers and the adult/parent chaperones cringe a bit and/or smile a little.  There's some embarrassment involved apparently with teaching kids that the most fundamental law of natural history is the need to produce children.  We can, personally, choose not to, but our species and every other one has to produce offspring or go extinct.  We are born, we reach sexual maturity, and we seek a way to leave behind our genes before we pass.  If we're a butterfly, we've only got a few days to do this.

It would seem that too many of us that create butterfly or pollinator gardens fail to fully grasp this even though we've graduated childhood and become adults.  There are far too many articles and posts extolling the virtues of creating these gardens and nearly all of them focus on nectar and pollen, coupled with the beauty of wildflowers.  In far too many cases, we continue to perpetuate the myth we learned as children and avoid the simple concept of sex and evolution.  A butterfly garden is not built around nectar and pollen. It is built around host plants needed to provide for the next generation - the caterpillars.  

Since arriving to Florida 35 years ago, I have not once encountered an emaciated butterfly dying from a lack of nectar.  There are flowers everywhere.  Adult butterflies are not starving to death and their lack of presence in your landscape is not due to a lack of flowers.  It's true that you might attract a few to your yard by adding some of the best nectar sources to your turfgrass-dominated landscape, but you have accomplished very little if all you've done is to attract them for a while and then sent them packing - looking for a real place to live.  Being a wayside diner on some lonely roadway is not the same as being the home you can live in.  Flowers feed adults, but they do little to close the necessary loop of life.  Butterflies need host plants and when you provide them, you've enabled that loop closure.

This is what makes a real butterfly garden and it is what we're now doing at the Gardens.  We're replacing the overabundance of flowers with host plants for as many butterflies that we can provide for given our site conditions.  It's what makes butterfly gardening so simple. It's the oft-used phrase from the movie Field of Dreams that if you build it, they will come.  Adults need to find the right plant to lay eggs on, the eggs hatch into caterpillars, and they feed voraciously for a week or so before they form a chrysalis and ultimately eclose to show themselves as an adult butterfly.  If different butterflies all chose the same plant to eat, the competition for food would be overwhelming for plant and animal alike so most butterflies are host plant specific.  Monarchs eat milkweeds, black swallowtails eat plants in the carrot family and giant swallowtails feed on plants in the citrus family.  

Providing host plants is the foundation of a butterfly garden. You design it for the species you most want to provide for. That is what truly attracts butterflies; not flowers for nectar - though having some around is necessary.  Take a few hours to research what each butterfly in your geographic area uses as a host plant, take a few hours more to decide which of those plants will do well in your landscape and then add in some flowers for nectar. When you've done all of this, you've created a real butterfly garden and you will almost-immediately see the difference.