 |
Butterfly Gardening
Summer flowers are now in full bloom. The activity for
this month is "flying flowers". Let's research how to attract
these beauties to our gardens. The successful butterfly garden
must provide a windless, sunny space, consider prevailing winds
and choose a low lying depression or provide a wind break of
dense shrubs. Food, water and shelter must be available for each
developing stage of a butterfly. Each stage of growth usually
requires a different host plant. The species Monarch has only
one food source- the milkweed.
You can increase the number of butterflies to your yard by
planting nectar flowers for the adults, such as buddlei,
the butterfly bush. Provide a variety of plant food for the
caterpillars and attract more species and enjoy watching the
life cycles of a butterfly.
Your activity for this month is to send in facts, pictures
and names of plants and butterflies to live and grow in our
flower society garden.
Send your contributions, pictures and discussions to me.
Click on mail button at bottom of page.
The Wicked Twins(Dwnn and Taliesin)
On Thursday, July 6, we saw a Red Admiral in our yard for
the very first time! He was sitting on the fence in the shade
of the trumpet vine arbor. We say "he" because male Admirals
are known to sit in the afternoon waiting for females. We never
saw more than two at a time, but they were there all day for four
days, and then they disappeared as suddenly as they arrived.
We have a patch of nettles near the trumpet vine...Weird Meowmie
likes nettles, and nettles are host to Red Admiral caterpillars.
Oh, we hope, we hope, we hope that they liked our yard enough to
lay eggs there.
Butterfly kisses...In "Middlemarch" Dorothea Brooke says to her
sister, "Celia, dear, come and kiss me", as her sister is about to
go to bed. Celia knelt at the right level and gave her a little
butterfly kiss.
A butterfly kiss is when one brushes one's eyelashes along somebody's
cheek. We think it is a furry lovely, loving term. We give Meowmie
butterfly kisses wif our whiskers.
The Wicked Twins sent in this link for
Butterflies Of America
Jessie
Butterfly Gardening
South Florida offers gardeners the opportunity to attract
butterflies every month of the year. There are about 160
species of butterflies in Florida. Here are some facts about
Flying Flowers.
Butterflies do not bite or carry disease. In their adult form
they do no harm at all.
Butterflies are cold blooded; they do not produce body heat
like humans, so they must rely on the sun to warm their body
so they can move about. Some bask with their wings open,
others with wings shut.
Many butterflies are territorial and fight, chasing others
out of their territory.
Butterflies can see ultraviolet light(light invisible to the
human eye)which makes the markings on flowers very vivid to them
and guides them to the nectar tubes. Some butterflies have
ultraviolet reflectants or markings on their own wings which
are visible only to other butterflies.
Butterflies are pollinators. While they are not as abundant as
bees, they do offer a valuable contribution. Unlike bees which
tend to be home based, butterflies move randomly over the landscape.
If you want to bring "flying flowers" into your yard, you need to
plant nectar plants, that supply food for the butterflies, and
larval plants, which are the food source for caterpillars.
Selecting the nectar plants is easy because butterflies and birds
will take nectar from a large variety of flowers. Generally,
these are plants that have sweet smelling flowers in warm colors
such as yellow, red, orange and blue blossoms. By selecting
plants that have an abundnce of nectar, you will have a cloud
of butterflies beating their wings to your garden path.
If you have just a small space and you want to get started,
what plants would you choose? I'd start with pentas, firebush
and lantana intersped with parsley, dill and fennel. Next,
I'd place a vine( passion flower or pipevine) on a fence or
topiary frame. You can make a pole frame by tying long bamboo
poles together and pushing them into the dirt. Plant a vine
at the base and watch it climb!
Orbit the Cat sent this butterfly article in.
Sometimes when my purrents haf human companies and we are
sitting in our garden, they say,"Look, a monarch!" just
because they see a orange butterfly.
We don't haf monarch butterflies, we have VICEROYS!
Many humans do not know dere is such a thing as a viceroy
butterfly. Furrankly, I think the viceroy is prettier than
the monarch, and if you will look at these pikshures, you
will see why I think so.
The curved back line crossing the veins on the hindwings of
the viceroy ,makes it easier to tell them apart. The viceroy
is a little bit smaller than a monarch and its larvae feed on
poplar and willow whereas the monarch larvae feed on milkweed.
Monarchs taste bad and are poisonous, most birds will not eat them.
Want to know how to tell a male monarch from a female? The male
has a black spot on the third vein of the hindwing. See it?
Because the viceroy looks so much like a monarch, it has good
protection from birds too. Keep an eye out for the viceroy butterfly,
and don't let your humans call it a monarch!
And our on-going activity is getting to know one another.
Send in your life stories, what your interests are and what
you would like for activities in our flower garden.
Purr to me, Lloyd. Click on mail button on bottom of page.
The midi is playing "Butterfly Kisses". Imagine being kissed
by a butterfly!
|
