How to attract butterflies to your Texas garden after monarchs migrate north

Monarch butterflies have left Texas on their migration north. They will return in September and October, but if you have flowers blooming in your landscape, you probably have lots of other butterfly species flying about and gathering nectar from the available flowers.

Some of the best flower species to attract butterflies with their nectar are zinnias, mist flowers, lantana, pentas, porter weed, firewheel, beebalm, horseherb, frogfruit, cosmos, poinciana, sunflowers, coreopsis, thyrallis, salvias, esperanza and vitex.

The nectar-producing flowers will attract many species of butterflies, and you can widen the number of species that show up by also providing their favored, and sometimes required, plant species on which they lay their eggs.

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A Queen butterfly is attracted to the nectar of a Gregg’s Blue Mist flower. (Steve Hamm/Dallas Morning News file photo)

Queen

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There are approximately 15 times as many moth species as butterfly species. They can be as important to the environment and the aesthetics of our gardens as butterflies. For more information on moth species and the plants that play a role in their natural histories, consider the book “Native Host Plants for Texas Moths” by Jim Weber and Lynne Weber.

To maximize the butterfly presence and production in your landscape, be careful about your use of insecticides. Do not use general sprays over a wide area. Limit pesticide use to products with specific targets and short periods of potency. Systemic products are not advisable if you want to minimize impact on butterflies that may visit the treated plants. Remember also that organic products can be just as deadly to a butterfly as a manufactured pesticide.

Use your available resources to find more information about other butterflies not discussed in the article but active in area landscapes. Among the list to consider are at least five species of sulfur butterflies, at least five species of white butterflies, red admiral, American beauty, buckeye, Brazilian skipper, common checkered skipper, painted lady, tiger swallowtail, pipevine swallowtail and lilac-banded longtail.

Tropical milkweed is an exotic milkweed. It is the easiest milkweed to grow in this area and appears to be the favorite egg-laying site for monarchs and queens that have a choice of milkweeds. It is a milkweed that may interfere with migration timing in Texas because it continues growing into the fall, and it may cause problems as a host of the OE parasite. Consider reviewing the available research results online or other sources to determine if it is advisable to use it and if so, how it should be managed.

It’s well known that monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed, but some gardeners might not be aware that the closely related queen butterfly, which doesn’t migrate regularly, also relies on milkweed as an egg-laying site and food source for its caterpillars. They are shaped like monarchs and are the same orange color but do not have the same bold black wing patterns. When their wings are upright, notice the silver-white pin size speckles on the queen wings. Queen caterpillars look like monarch caterpillars but they have three appendages arising from the back, while the monarchs only have two. The appendages look like antennae and are spaced along the back.

The Gulf fritillary’s wings show less patterning than the queens. (Mathew Risley/Getty Images)

Fritillary

Another orange-colored butterfly that is common in area neighborhoods is the Gulf fritillary. The fritillaries’ wings show even less patterning than the queens and are thinner than the squarish winged queens and monarchs. They do have angular silver blotches under the wings.

There is also another fritillary, the variegated fritillary, flying about our yards. To me, it looks like a faded version of the Gulf fritillary.

The fritillaries lay their eggs on vines in the passiflora family, also called passion vine. There are a number of exotic passion vines that produce fascinating shaped and colored flowers (and aggressive vines). My favorite, however, is the native passion vine. It has a fancy blue flower and freezes back to the ground every winter so you don’t have to worry about it taking over the neighborhood.

Bordered patch butterflies are mostly dark colored but have orange bars across lower part of their wings. (Rolf Nussbaumer/Getty Images)

Bordered patch

If you have sunflowers growing in your yard and the foliage gets consumed, expect to find the bordered patch butterflies and their caterpillars to be using them as their egg-laying and foliage-feeding site. They are smaller than the butterfly species discussed so far, being about a quarter coin size. Bordered patches are mostly dark colored but have orange bars across lower part of their wings.

A wild and large black palmedes swallowtail searches feeds on nectar from Texas lantana shrub flowers. (milehightraveler/Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Swallowtail

The largest butterfly you are probably seeing in your landscape is the giant swallowtail. They are over 3 inches across with a black upper wing surface patterned with a bold yellow triangle. The giant swallowtails’ favorite egg-laying site seems to be citrus trees. The caterpillars are very distinctive because they resemble bird poop as much as a caterpillar. They don’t seem to lay lots of eggs at a time so your backyard limes, lemons and satsumas don’t usually suffer much if you tolerate a few of the feeding caterpillars.

On the other hand, black swallowtails are smaller than the giant swallowtails with the black wings only marked with a shallow yellow V, lay their eggs on fennel, parsley and dill. They lay lots of eggs on the smaller egg-laying sites, and the caterpillars will usually strip all the foliage from the plant. If you are relying on parsley or dill for a recipe in a few days, it is usually best to remove most of the caterpillars before they consume all of the foliage.

For help in identifying more of our local species and their preferences, obtain a few of the available resources. Consider the books “Butterflies of North America” by Jim Brock and Kenn Kaufman, “Butterfly Gardening for the South” by Geyata Ajilvsgi, and “Caterpillars in the Field and Garden” by T. Allen, J. Brock, and J Glassberg.

Calvin Finch is a retired Texas A&M horticulturist. calvinrfinch@gmail.com

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This article originally published at How to attract butterflies to your Texas garden after monarchs migrate north.