Butterflies have a taste for New Jersey 'home cooking'

RELEASE: Sept. 7, 2007 – Volume XXXIX, No. 36

If you’ve ever traveled to an exotic destination, you may have experienced the stomach-churning prospect of sampling some local delicacy that you ordinarily wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. While new tastes are exciting, by the end of the trip you’re happy to return to familiar, old-fashioned home cooking!

For some critters, “home cooking” can be a much more serious matter. New Jersey’s beautiful butterflies, for example, need a complex menu of foods and habitats provided by native plants.

With changing life stages, colorful monarchs, swallowtails and other butterflies found in the Garden State during warm-weather months have specific tastes. First, they look for host plants to provide a place to lay their eggs and leaves for newly-hatched caterpillars to eat. Once grown, caterpillars need certain grasses and plants on which to form a chrysalis. Adult butterflies need flowers with lots of nectar. And at all stages, butterflies require sheltering plants to protect them from wind and provide nighttime roosting spots.

Ideal butterfly habitats have plenty of sun, as butterflies are cold-blooded and fly well only when their body temperature is over 85 degrees. They also must have water for nutrients and moisture. And, of course, the habitats must be free of insecticides. After all, butterflies are bugs, too!

Native plants in the Garden State are adapted to thrive in these conditions, and provide very well for butterfly needs. Caterpillars like to munch on and shelter in the leaves of woodland grasses, violets, Queen Anne’s lace, milkweed, red and white clover, as well as hawthorn, spicebush, elm, wild cherry, oak, hackberry, viburnum, willow, sumac, dogwood and walnut. All are New Jersey natives! Adult butterflies look for flowers with nectar. They prefer milkweeds, asters, thistle, sunflowers, lilac, phlox, yarrows, goldenrods, dotted mint, white turtlehead, buttonbush, lupines, ironweed, blazing stars, black-eyed Susan, lobelia, monarda, coneflowers, and New Jersey tea. This state we’re in has a dazzling array of native plants loved by butterflies.

To top it off, the things that make these plants good for butterflies also make them a homeowner’s best friend. Many are drought resistant and don’t need much watering, and they bloom during the hottest days when everything else wilts. A butterfly meadow of native plants is a perfect, relatively care-free alternative to toiling – or paying someone else - to keep a gigantic lawn green during the dog days of summer.

Just as we take comfort from familiar foods, butterflies are best served by the native plants they have adapted to over the course of generations. To set a welcoming table for them, there are many resources to help you plan and cultivate a butterfly garden using plants native to your area of New Jersey. The North American Butterfly Association is a great place to start, at www.naba.org; the site includes a link to their New Jersey chapter as well. The New Jersey chapter’s website includes a list of parks and preserves containing butterfly habitats. The reference section of the N.J. Native Plant Society also has helpful information, at www.npsnj.org.

Butterflies have been plentiful in New Jersey this summer, and I hope you’ve enjoyed watching them as much as I have. Please contact me at info@njconservation.org, or visit NJCF’s website at www.njconservation.org, for more information about conserving New Jersey’s precious land and natural resources.

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