A Butterfly Garden for Milkweed

[BooBooBearBecky]

Originally Posted by NEWisc

Lots and lots of choices! The list looks long, but many of the plants will serve more than one species of butterfly. It can be a lot of fun picking and choosing which ones will be going in the butterfly garden.

And of course, knowing that the butterflies are going to benefit from the effort has it's own reward. Part of which will be seeing a lot more butterflies!

NEWisc, thank you for that wonderful, organized, alphabetical list!!!

The butterflies are not the ones who are going to benefit from your hard work.

As the Seed Packet Coordinator, this list with correctly spelled latin native plant names, along with native plant common names will help me soooooooo much with my Seed Packet List!

Many Many Many Thanks!!
BooBooBearBecky

[milkweed]

OK now my work begins. Its time to break out the Field Guide to Indiana Wildflowers and see what plants are native to my county and get some idea what they look like. Then I'll need to figure out which ones will grow in my specific garden.

I enjoyed going throw the list of butterflies and moths. I was surprised at how attractive some of the moths were.

[Equilibrium]

The USDA's site could help you. Try out the advanced search on the left, Welcome to the PLANTS Database | USDA PLANTS Plug in your county in IN for County Distribution, pick dicot for Category, pick L48 native for Native Status then check the box over on the right by each criteria then go to the bottom and search. The plants that are indigenous will show up and you will be able to see exactly which ones are documented as being native to your county.

[NEWisc]

All of the plants listed are native to Indiana according to the USDA website maps. County listings can be a little bit iffy though. It all depends on whether or not some biologist(s) have taken the time to document the plants in any specific county. I think if the plant is documented in your level III Ecoregion that you could be quite comfortable that it would be appropriate for the butterfly garden:

www.nps.gov/plants/SOS/pdf/SOS%20Omernik%20Level%20III.pdf

Have fun!! More plants and butterflies to come.

BBBBecky - Glad to help!!

[Cirsium]

Another thing that will help narrow down the plant choices is availability. I would check some native plant nursery sources to see which ones they have. There's a nice list of native plant nurseries in the stickies at the top of this forum:
North American Native Plants - Wildlife Gardeners - North American Wildlife Gardening

Butterfly gardening from the perspective of a serious look at native host plants is relatively new. The silver lining here is that you will be helping to create the demand just by asking about these plants.

[Dirty Knees]

Where would I find a printable shopping list for Milwaukee?

[Fearless Weeder]

Why don't you start a thread asking for a list.

North American Native Plants - Wildlife Gardeners - North American Wildlife Gardening

[NEWisc]

Originally Posted by Dirty Knees

Where would I find a printable shopping list for Milwaukee?

It can be hard to find a good native host plant to butterfly list. Especially anything beyond the most popular species of plants and butterflies. But these butterfly to host plant relationships hold over a wide area. The lists in this thread would almost certainly be good for your area.

To check to see if a listed butterfly is present in your state, just go to this link and click on your state:
Map Search | Butterflies and Moths of North America
Scroll down and check the list for the butterfly you are interested in.

To determine which of the host plants in the list are native to your state, we can use the USDA site:
Welcome to the PLANTS Database | USDA PLANTS

As an example, if we use the first butterfly in the list in post #25 (Silver-spotted skipper (Epargyreus clarus)), going to the first link shows that it is present in your state.

To check on the host plants for your state it's easiest to use the Latin names of the plants in the list. I would like to take a moment here to talk about Latin names so that everyone can use this method.

A species name has two parts: the genus and the specific epithet. The genus is the first word and the epithet is the second word. An easy way to look at this is to compare it to English human names. The genus would be the last name and the epithet would be the first name. If it was human names, it would look like Smith john. Now there would be more than one Smith, so there might be a Smith mary and a Smith susie, for example. In plants it might be Rosa blanda, Rosa palustris and a Rosa carolina. The big difference between human and plant names is that there can be many Smith john's, but there can only be one Rosa blanda. OK, now that I've got my plug in for Latin names, I'll get back to the example.

The first two host plants listed for the silver-spotted skipper are:
Amorpha canescens – leadplant
Amorpha fruticosa – desert false indigo

Plugging the genus name (amorpha) into the search box on the USDA website will get us to this page:
Name Search Results | USDA PLANTS

Note that one of the links on that page has just the genus name 'Amorpha'. It will not always be the first one, but it's the one to look for. Clicking on that link will get us this page:
PLANTS Profile for Amorpha (false indigo) | USDA PLANTS

Scroll down the page to the little maps. Each map is for one species (genus and epithet) of plant. If your state is in blue on a species map, that plant is native to your state (these maps are not 100% right all the time, but they are very good). If your state is white, that plant hasn't been documented as being in your state. If your state is a dark gray that plant is in your state, but it is not a native plant in your state, it is invasive.

For the example we are using both of the plants listed are native to Wisconsin. "Plant some and they will come".

[milkweed]

Acer rubrum - Red Maple (Polyphemus moth, Rosy maple moth, Imperial)
Aquilegia canadensis - Eastern columbine (Columbine Duskywing)
Aristolochia tomentosa - Woolly Pipevine (Pipevine swallowtail)
Asclepias species- Milkweed (Monarch)
Aster species (Azures, Northern Cresent, Painted Lady)
Centrosema virginiana - Butterfly Pea Vine (Eastern Tailed-blue)
Cercis canadensis - Redbud (IO moth, Henry's Elfin)
Chasmanthium latifolium - Northern river oats (Little Wood Satyr)
Cornus sericea(stolonifera) - Redtwig/red osier dogwood (Cecropia moth, Spring Azure)
Crataegus phaenopyrum - Washington Hawthorn (Red Spotted Admiral,White Admiral)
Gleditsia triacanthos- Honeylocust (Silver-spotted Skipper, Bicolor honeylocust moth)
Helianthus species-sunflowers (Silvery Checker Spot,American Lady)
Ilex verticillata - Winterberry holly (Henry's Elfin)
Juniperus virginiana - Eastern red cedar (Juniper Hairstreak)
Lonicera sempervirens - coral honeysuckle (Baltimore)
Mimulus ringens -Monkey Flower (Baltimore, Common Buckeye)
Malus coronaria - Sweet crabapple (Cecropia silkmoth)
Rosa carolina - Native Wild roses (Striped Hairstreak)
Rudbeckia species - Blackeyed susans (Silvery Checkerspot, Painted Lady)
Solidago species - Goldenrods (Painted Lady)
Sorghastrum nutans - Indian grass Little (Wood Satyr)
Sporobolus heterolepis - Prairie Dropseed (Little Wood Satyr)
Symphyotrichum species (new genus name for many asters)

Compositae -Pearly Crescentspot,Gorgone Checkerspot,American Painted lady

Would Coreopsis,Echinacea and Heliopsis be considered host plants?
Coreopsis tripteris - Tall coreopsis
Echinacea purpurea - Purple coneflowers
Heliopsis helianthoides - Oxeye sunflower

[milkweed]

These are the potential host plants that I think will grow in my garden. I'm not familiar with all these plants. So if you are knowledgeable about them, please share. Thank you. I have full sun and clay. The soil can get very dry in summer, rock hard but most of the time its moist.
I'm thinking of adding a low spot and a berm.

Flora
Amorpha canescens – leadplant
Amorpha fruticosa – desert false indigo
Baptisia alba – white wild indigo(leucantha)
Baptisia australis – blue wild indigo
Baptisia bracteata – longbract wild indigo(leucophaea)
Baptisia tinctoria – horseflyweed
Bidens aristosa – bearded beggarticks
Bidens cernua – nodding beggartick
Bidens connata – purplestem beggarticks
Bidens coronata – crowned beggarticks
Bidens frondosa – devil's beggartick
Bidens tripartita – threelobe beggarticks
Callirhoe involucrata-winecup
Cryptotaenia canadensis – Canadian honewort
Dalea candida – white prairie clover (Petalostemum)
Dalea purpurea – purple prairie clover
Desmanthus illinoensis – Illinois bundleflower
Desmodium canadense – showy ticktrefoil
Eryngium yuccifolium – button eryngo, rattlesnake-master
Galium boreale – northern bedstraw
Glycyrrhiza lepidota – American licorice
Lathyrus venosus – veiny pea
Lespedeza capitata – roundhead lespedeza
Lespedeza virginica – slender lespedeza semi-shade?
Mentha arvensis – wild mint
Osmorhiza claytonii – Clayton's sweetroot
Rumex altissimus – pale dock
Senna hebecarpa – American senna Cassia
Senna marilandica – Maryland senna Cassia
Strophostyles helvola – amberique-bean vein
Taenidia integerrima – yellow pimpernel
Tephrosia virginiana – Virginia tephrosia
Thaspium trifoliatum – purple meadowparsnip
Zizia aptera – meadow zizia, heart-leaved golden alexander
Zizia aurea – golden zizia, golden alexander