Sweet Nectar: Selecting Good Nectar Plants for your Butterfly Garden

To attract butterflies to your yard you will need nectar. Nectar is a sugary water substance found inside of many flowers and is a mainstay for butterflies. Butterflies extend their proboscis and insert it into flowers to drink the nectar found within. Nectar is mainly sugar and contains very few nutrients. Butterflies subsisting upon nectar have fairly short life spans usually about 2 to 4 weeks.
Not all plants produce good amounts of nectar so just planting a bush with flowers in your yard may not bring the butterflies that you seek. Here are some tips for choosing good nectar plants for your garden.

 Butterflies like choice: By providing lots of different flower options you can attract more species and greater numbers of butterflies. Plants of differing heights, various colors and with long bloom seasons can make your garden more attractive to butterflies.

Sometimes a weed is not a weed. Try leaving a small section of backyard to go wild  and find out what wildflowers are already growing in your garden. Some of these flowers, like Spanish needles may not be the most attractive to us but butterflies enjoy them a great deal.

A riot of color: Butterflies can perceive color and some species are drawn to particular colors. Planting multiple species of flowers that bloom in an array of colors will help to attract more species of butterflies.

Size Matters: Butterflies come in all sorts of sizes and will need flowers that range in size from tiny to fairly large. Little butterflies can often be found at tiny flowers while larger butterflies often select flowers that are larger and contain more nectar. Tiny flowers of the scorpion tail will draw little blue butterflies and diminutive hairstreaks while the larger blooms of firebush attract swallowtails and sulphurs.

Clusters: Butterflies are often drawn to flowers that grow in clusters. These provide more nectar in a small area and allow butterflies to feed without having to do a lot of work. Milkweeds, salvia, firebush, pentas and lantana all provide clusters of flowers that make speed eating easy for butterflies.

Shop smart and research: While wandering around a plant nursery, pay attention to what the local butterflies are using for nectar there. Each time I shop I make sure to check out the plant species that have the most butterfly attention and then use my smart phone to learn more about the plants if I am not familiar with the species. This helps me make sure that the delicious nectar plants will thrive in the conditions already present in my yard or in the MOSI gardens. When looking at new plants, try some research on the front end. A simple web-search on a particular plant will probably let you know if it is attractive to butterflies.

Florida Friendly: Make sure to buy plants that will do well in your garden’s sun, soil and water conditions and check out this list of Florida native nectar plants that attract butterflies. Some native plants can be hard to find but many are worth the effort.

Seasonal changes: Each season should see different plants blooming in your gardens just as each season brings lows or highs for various butterfly populations. If all of your nectar plants bloom in the spring, your garden may not attract butterflies in the summer, fall or winter. Try to pick an array of nectar plants that will provide year-round nectar.