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Tag: Butterfly

Best Native American Shrubs for Feeding Birds

Service berries are enjoyed by many bird species, such as Baltimore orioles.

The best forage plants for wild birds are appealing natives that provide nutritious fruits, seeds, and nectar. Our top picks offer even more bird food because they attract favorite insect and caterpillar bites. Planting just a few of these shrubs in your yard will supplement bird-feeding efforts and help increase local bird diversity.

Planting to invite wildlife to feed has become more popular because more gardeners see their yards are an extension of the natural world. Natural habitat continues to be destroyed at a rampant pace, leaving fewer places for wild birds to feed. The shrubs on this list will beautify your yard or garden with their fine foliage, flowers, and fruits as well as the added beauty of the colorful, melodious birds they are sure to attract.

Native caterpillars are top-quality native bird food, so choose plants that are important larval host plants. They also mean more butterflies to enjoy! (American bluebird shown)

We recommend the native shrubs listed here in addition to perennials and even annuals. (Click here for a full list of great native larval host plants for the garden.)

Native Shrubs for Birds

Most of the shrubs on this list are native to Eastern North America, though some have limited distribution in the West. All are quite hardy and effortless to grow once established. (Click here for excellent shrub planting and siting instructions.)

The copious red fruits of American cranberrybush are a delight to birds.

American Cranberrybush (Viburnum opulus var. americanum, Zones 2-8, 8-15 feet, full to partial sun) attracts spring pollinators, is an essential larval host plant, and provides delicious red fruits to birds in late fall and early winter. (Birds prefer to eat the berries after they have become frozen and thawed.) Few native shrubs are as beautiful. The domed clusters of white spring flowers feed bees and butterflies and red fall fruits are so cheery. The maple-like summer leaves are fed upon by spring azure (Celestrina ladon) and hummingbird clearwing moth (Hemaris thysbe) caterpillars and turn shades of orange-red in autumn.

Cedar waxwings eat berries and insects, which they can get from the summer fruit of serviceberries and the caterpillars and pollinators they attract.

Serviceberry (Amelanchier spp., Zones 3-9, 12-20 feet, full to partial sun) species exist across much of North America, and most are well-suited to the home garden. Their white clusters of fragrant spring flowers attract pollinators, the leaves feed caterpillars, and the edible summer fruits are a favorite of birds. Red-spotted purple butterfly (Limenitis arthemis) caterpillars rely on their leaves for food. In fall, the leaves turn glorious shades of yellow, orange, and red.

Baltimore Orioles have diets of insects, fruit, and nectar, all of which they can get from a serviceberry shrub.

Chokecherry shrubs (Aronia arbutifolia, Zones 4-9, 6-10 feet, full to partial sun) are fantastically beautiful. The fragrant white spring flowers attract lots of pollinators, spring azure butterflies feed on the summer foliage, and the copious bright red fall fruits bring lots of birds to the garden. The season ends with a grand display of brilliant red and orange fall leaves. Try the more compact variety ‘Brilliantissima‘ (6-8 feet), which has high fruit production and redder fall leaves.

Red chokecherries can persist into fall and even early winter. (Photo by Abrahami)

American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana, Zones 6-10, 4-8 feet, full to partial sun) can tolerate a little shade but it flowers and sets fruit the best in full sun. Bees and butterflies visit the small lavender or white flowers that line the branches in spring, and by late summer or fall, they turn brilliant purple. Spring azure butterfly and snowberry clearwing moth (Hemaris diffinis) caterpillars feed on the summer leaves. The fruits persist until late fall if they are not snapped up by birds first. Most often the fall leaves turn yellow.

A northern mockingbird feasts on fall beautyberries. (Image by Jessie Keith)

New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus, Zones 4-8, 2-3 feet, full to partial sun) is a compact wildlife wild-food powerhouse! Pollinators visit the white clusters of fragrant summer flowers, including several specialized bee species, and the fatty seeds produced are snacked on by many songbirds. Several butterfly larvae, such as those of mottled duskywing (Erynnis martialis), spring azure, and summer azure butterflies (Celestrina neglecta), rely on its leaves for essential food. The foliage turns russet-yellow hues in fall.

New Jersey tea is very compact and pretty. It’s the perfect intro native shrub for gardeners with little space. (Image by John Oyston)

Spice Bush (Lindera benzoin, Zones 5-9, 8-15 feet, partial sun to partial shade) deserves to be planted more often in home landscapes, especially those with wooded areas. The fragrant leaves of the open shrubs are fed upon by spicebush swallowtail caterpillars (Papilio troilus), and female spice bushes produce nutritious red berries that are important to many wild birds. The fall leaves generally turn yellow.

The fatty fruits of spicebush are eaten by many birds. (Image by Cody Hough, college student and photographer in the Michigan area.)
Spicebush swallowtails rely on spice bushes for larval food, and birds enjoy eating them. Spicebushes also produce fatty fruits that many bird species eat.

Sustaining a Fall and Winter Butterfly Garden

Sustaining a Fall and Winter Butterfly Garden Featured Image
Optimize your garden as a fall migrating butterfly refueling station for monarchs.

Your summer garden has been a haven for butterflies. Painted ladies and orange sulphurs have flocked to your purple coneflowers and white cosmos, and monarch and swallowtail caterpillars have munched on the showy milkweeds, Dutchman’s pipevine, and bronze fennel. Then there were the giant swallowtails, which discovered the golden hop tree (Ptelea trifoliata ‘Aurea’, USDA Hardiness Zones 5-9) in the backyard.

Now – with the approach of fall – your garden takes on a new role: as a sheltering, nurturing habitat for overwintering butterfly species.

How to Help Migrating Butterflies

Monarch butterflies on Goldenrod
Goldenrod is a fall favorite for monarchs making their great flight southward.

Some butterfly species – most famously monarchs – flit away to warmer climes as winter approaches. They don’t require winter shelter, but they DO need ample fuel for their migration flight. To optimize your garden as a butterfly refueling station, stock it with late-blooming, nectar-rich perennials such as goldenrods (Solidago spp.), whose sunny late-summer flowers are monarch magnets.

Among the many Solidago that make excellent, well-behaved subjects for perennial plantings are stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida, Zones 3-9), which sports dense domed flowerheads on 4-to 5-foot stems clad with large, handsome, gray-green leaves. The flowers of the equally garden-worthy showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa, Zones 3-8) are held in generous conical spires atop 3-foot, maroon-marked stems. For shade, there are the likes of zigzag goldenrod (Solidago flexicaulis, Zones 3-8), a spreader that forms leafy 2-foot-tall hummocks decked with conical flower clusters.

Monarch butterfly on Asters
Asters are also favored by migrating monarchs.

Additional late-season butterfly favorites include asters, Joe-Pye weed (along with other perennials in the genus formerly known as Eupatorium), and showy and cutleaf coneflowers (Rudbeckia fulgida and R. laciniata, Zones 3-9).

How to Help Winter Pupating Butterflies

Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii), in its yellow fall color, false indigo (Baptisia), and asters.
Many sturdy perennials support swallowtail chrysalises through winter. These include Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii), in its yellow fall color, false indigo (Baptisia), and asters.
Swallowtail chrysalis
A swallowtail chrysalis.

Rather than flitting south, most butterflies stay put for the winter, riding it out in a state of suspended animation known as diapause. For many species, diapause occurs in the form of a chrysalis, a hardened structure which encases the pupating butterfly while it morphs from crawling caterpillar to flitting adult. You’ll greatly increase the butterfly-friendliness of your garden if you leave some perennials standing in fall, thus providing structures to which swallowtails and other winter-pupaters can attach their chrysalises. Stems of goldenrods and asters make perfect chrysalis hosts, as do those of other sturdy perennials such as false indigo (Baptisia), bluestar (Amsonia), and wild senna (Senna).

How to Help Butterflies in Larval or Egg Diapause

Collecting raked leaves
Rake your lawns but refrain from cleaning garden beds. This helps overwintering pollinators.

Numerous butterfly species, such as skippers and fritillaries, spend the winter as caterpillars, typically sheltering under a blanketing layer of fallen leaves and other plant debris. This is yet another argument for letting nature take its course in autumn. Instead of cutting back and raking outspent perennials and their debris in fall, consider designating some or all of your butterfly garden as a disturbance-free zone. You can tidy things up in spring after the weather warms. After spring cleanup, apply a layer of Fafard Premium Natural & Organic Compost to give your butterfly plants a boost.

Eggs are the means of overwintering for hairstreaks and a handful of other butterfly species. Again, perennial stems and detritus are crucial for providing adequate winter protection – so save the garden clean-up until spring!

How to Help Overwintering Adult Butterflies

Mourning cloaks butterfly
Mourning cloaks overwinter as winged adults. They take refuge in hollow trees, unheated outbuildings, and other cozy niches. (Image by Pavel Kirillov)

Mourning cloaks, question marks, and a few other butterflies tough it out as winged adults, seeking refuge in hollow trees, unheated outbuildings, and other cozy niches. If you have such features on your property, consider conserving them as winter butterfly habitat. Boxes sold as putative butterfly shelters “can be attractive, and do little harm, [but] studies have shown that butterflies do not use them in any way,” according to the North American Butterfly Association.

In whatever form, winter diapause is a crucial stage of a butterflies’ life cycle. If you want a host of flitting butterflies next summer, be sure to provide the resources they need to make it through this winter.

The metamorphosis of a Painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui)
The metamorphosis of a Painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui). It is also a migrant species, like the Monarch, though their migratory patterns are not synchronized, as with monarchs.