Information on host plants

[Greylock]

I am very new to this forum, and have only spent the last year or so working on naturalscapeing my yard . One year although far from now i would like to eliminate most of my grass and replace it with native plants of various species.

Right now i am growing lists of native wild plants i would like to accumulate as the years come on , trying to form a long term plan , and drawing out maps of how i would like my yard to take shape.

another one of my major interest's though admittedly i am more ignorant on the subject then knowledgeable is insects. having thriving habitats for them develop in is of interest to me ... especially butterflies and moths. I would like my son (who is to be born very soon) be able to see butterflies in his own back yard.

So is there any resources that you know of , or perhaps could one of you riddle off a list of plants perhaps of interest that i could locate and grow to be the host species of butterflies for my area ... which is south western ontario .

Currently i have growing form seed milkweed , and asters of various types which i know are host plants to monarchs (and i forget what asters attract..). But any more plants would be cool ... though i am not intrested in tree's really (which i know are allot of host plants) simply because the six black walnut tree's in my yard really do take up quite a bit of space ..

[Hedgerowe]

Greylock, if you have not read through amelanchier's posts, you may want to take the time to go through some of them, here: My re-wilding project in the Niagara Frontier

And there are some folks here that astound me in their knowledge of insects. Any of them will be able to tell you what you would like to know about any insect at all.

You may already be familiar with this, but it looks like a good place to start http://www.toronto.ca/trees/pdfs/Fac...ive_Plants.pdf
It contains links to other sites as well. It sounds as though you are south of Toronto, but you should be able to piece together workable information from a variety of sources.

Whatever information that you find will be interesting to the rest of us, so please keep us informed about your project as it evolves!

[Greylock]

Unfortunately Hedgerowe the Niagara frontier and Toronto are both northern to me , and actually to my knowledge would be a foreign ecosystems to my particular area , though with more research (which i am always working on) their would be some overlap of vegetation.

I am in south western ontario, in the Carolinian forest region. Over 80 present of the original ecosystem to my area has been utterly destroyed . But definitely i will read amelanchiers posts and thank you for the references. Also thinking of it , the Carolinian forest region in the US called the eastern deciduous forest , though the problem with that is there is many types of eastern Deciduous forests. the closest cities to my area would be sarnia , and perhaps london, both Toronto and Niagara are about 3 hours north of my location.

The Funny thing is my ecosystem would have more in common to that of Michigan and ohio than Northern ontario , so i do tend to look up more American resources of information then ontario resources.

thank you again and i will begin to look through those links you gave me

[Cirsium]

So is there any resources that you know of , or perhaps could one of you riddle off a list of plants perhaps of interest that i could locate and grow to be the host species of butterflies for my area ... which is south western ontario .

The Funny thing is my ecosystem would have more in common to that of Michigan and ohio than Northern ontario , so i do tend to look up more American resources of information then ontario resources.

Here's a thread that I think will be helpful for you:
http://www.wildlifegardeners.org/for...ly-garden.html

You can also use the first link in that post to determine which butterflies are found in Michigan and Ohio. Since butterflies don't concern themselves with our human political boundaries, I think you can be fairly confident that most of the butterflies listed in those two states will be present in your area.

[Equilibrium]

"I would like my son (who is to be born very soon) be able to see butterflies in his own back yard." big congrats on the future nature lover. The Ladybird Johnson site has a way for you to plug in Ontario while further refining the search to get the results you want, NPIN: Recommended Native Plants - Butterflies and Moths of North America Try it. Most of the hosts are the same as the Native Host Plants for a Midwest Garden but there were a few listed that were different that maybe you'd like to try. Pick Herb for general appearance if you want flowers.