Native alternatives to butterfly bush

Recently at the Birds & Blooms blogs, Carole Sevilla Brown wrote about the problems butterfly bush is causing in many areas of the United States. Although commonly recommended for butterfly gardeners, the most commonly available butterfly bush in the horticultural trade, Buddleja davidii, is native to east Asia and is an invasive species in many areas of the United States.

So far, Canada's cold climate has apparently prevented B. davidii from becoming naturalized here, except in parts of British Columbia (Tallent-Halsell and Watt, 2009). However, each mature butterfly bush can produce millions of seeds, and these seeds can be spread by cars and trains (Tallent-Halsell and Watt, 2009). So a butterfly bush in Toronto could contribute to the problems our neighbours to the south are facing. In addition, climate change is likely to make Ontario's climate milder and therefore put our wild spaces at greater risk from butterfly bush invasion.

Luckily, there are many alternatives for butterfly gardeners. Growing native species avoids the problems of habitat destruction caused by invasives, and can provide better attraction for butterflies by providing food for caterpillars as well as adult butterflies (Tallamy 2009).

With that in mind, here are a few flowering shrubs native to Ontario, which I found through Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's Plants Database. This is a great resource for wildlife gardeners throughout the United States and Canada; you can search by state/province, habit, lifespan, light needs, moisture needs, bloom season, bloom colour, and height! Each species description at the Wildflower Center's database includes a wealth of information, including which butterflies' and moths' larvae feed on each plant, and links to their descriptions at Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA).

Native Ontario shrubs to attact butterflies

• Amelanchier alnifolia (Saskatoon serviceberry): fragrant white flowers in spring. Berries are red to black in colour, attract birds, also edible for humans. Autumn foliage is yellow, orange, or red.
• Amorpha canescens (leadplant): small shrub with spikes of striking dark purple flowers in early summer; attractive silvery foliage.
• Ceanothus herbaceus (Jersey tea): umbels of white flowers in spring to early summer. Larval host for mottled duskywing (Erynnis martialis).
• Cephalanthus occidentalis (buttonbush): nifty spherical clusters of white flowers in the summer. Nutlets attract birds.
• Lindera benzoin (northern spicebush): pale yellow flowers before leaves emerge (male plants have showier flowers). Yellow autumn foliage; red berries on female plants. Larval host for spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus), eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), and promethea silkmoth (Callosamia promethea).
• Spiraea alba (white meadowsweet): spikes of white flowers in the summer, yellow autumn foliage. Larval host for spring azure (Celastrina ladon).
• Spiraea tomentosa (steeplebush): steeple-shaped clusters of pink flowers in summer. Larval host for Columbia silkmoth (Hyalophora columbia).
• Viburnum acerifolium (maple-leaf viburnum): clusters of white flowers in spring and summer followed by red to black berries which attract birds. Pinkish-purple autumn foliage! Larval host for spring azure (Celastrina ladon).

I'm so glad that Carole wrote her original post, as I didn't realize that butterfly bush was such a problem, nor did I know much about these lovely native shrubs that we can grow instead. I've got seeds for buttonbush stratifying right now, and I plan to look into some of these other shrubs as well. Please click the links for each plant to see gorgeous photos; I hope you'll be as excited about these plants as I am and try some in your garden!

Works cited

• Nita Tallent-Halsell and Michael S. Watt (2009). The Invasive Buddleja davidii. The Botanical Review, September.
• Douglas W. Tallamy (2009). Bringing nature home: How native plants sustain wildlife in our gardens (updated and expanded edition) Portland, OR: Timber Press.

Can you recognize these seeds?

I try to get photos of my plants at different stages of life, which means I end up with a lot of dull photos like these. So to add a bit of intrigue, can you guess what species these seeds are? Right now they are indistinguishable to the naked eye, but once they get going they will be quite distinctive!

Mystery plant A

This familiar member of the mint family is grown for its decorative foliage. In its native land (southeast Asia) it's a perennial, but here in Canada it is treated as an annual.

Mystery plant B

This member of the borage family has attractive dark green foliage, but is grown for its fragrant dark purple flowers. Here in Canada it's treated as an annual, but in its homeland, Peru, it is a perennial shrub (or sub-shrub depending on who you ask).

Gazania sprouts!

Tonight I decided to peek at the gazania seeds I started last week (the packet said to keep them in the dark for 7 to 14 days so I was deliberately not looking at them). It's a good thing I did because as you can see they have all sprouted, and it looks like they've been up for a while. They're awfully etiolated but hopefully they'll be able to recover now that they're under the lights.

First annual seeds of 2011: Gazania rigens 'Daybreak Pink Shades'

While native plants are my passion, I can't resist growing some annuals from seeds as well, especially since most natives need a few years to grow from seed to flowering size.

This is my first attempt at growing Gazania rigens (gazania or treasure-flower, gazanie) from seed (or any other way). Gazanias are low growing brightly coloured daisies (these ones are pink), and I'm hoping that like other daisies they will be attractive to pollinators as well as humans. G. rigens is native to South Africa and Mozambique, and grows as a weed in Australia, but has not naturalized in North America.

I was surprised by the pale yellow colour of these seeds; they don't look ripe somehow. According to the package they need a week or two of darkness to germinate, which is just as well as I haven't figured out where I'm going to set my lights up yet. They're currently sown in flats hidden in one of my kitchen cupboards!

PS: The natives I've started so far are Agastache foeniculum, Allium cernuum, Anemone virginiana, Aquilegia canadensis, Asclepias sp. (syriaca?), Asclepias tuberosa, Baptisia australis, Cephalanthus occidentalis, Desmodium canadense, and Helenium autumnale. They're stratifying in flats outdoors, hopefully they will get enough cold weather before spring starts in earnest.

Snowy owl in the garden!

Although theoretically we live in its winter range, I'm not sure if snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus, harfang des neiges) live in Toronto any more. (Apparently there are some owls here though, check out these sweet photos of owls in Toronto by Jean Iron.)

Nicky and I took advantage of the recent "extreme" snowstorm here in Toronto (which would have been considered perfectly ordinary February weather where I grew up in the Ottawa Valley) to create this snow scupture (obviously we weren't looking at an image of a real snowy owl when we did it!). The coloured parts were done with Wilton Icing Colors in Lemon Yellow, Black, and mixture of Lemon Yellow and Christmas Red, available at Bulk Barn. I don't know if I'll try adding colour to a snow sculpture again; the colour kept bleeding, and I kept having to scoop out areas and replace them with fresh snow.

Here's a nostalgia-inducing video about the snowy owl from the Canadian Wildlife Federation's classic Hinterland Who's Who series of PSAs. (Regular readers, I'm sorry I've been away from the blog so long. My fibromyalgia flared up in early autumn and for a while I forgot that I even had a garden, never mind a garden blog! And of course although this blog is supposed to be about gardening all year round, winter is not really prime gardening time in Toronto. But I'm feeling better now and have a whole backlog of photos to post, and there are exciting things coming up in terms of garlic mustard eradication in High Park later this year!)

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, August 2010

August is prime blooming time here in Toronto!

Natives

• Agastache foeniculum (anise hyssop, hysope anisée). I'm very excited about this one because it's the first time I've managed to grow it successfully from seed; in fact this plant is in it's first year and already blooming!
• Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed, asclépiade tubéreuse)
• Conyza candensis (horseweed, vergerette du Canada)
• Eupatorium 'Phantom' (Joe Pye weed, eupatoire naine)
• Monarda didyma 'Jacob Klein' (beebalm, monarde)
• Myosotis laxa (bay forget-me-not, myosotis laxiflore)
• Oxalis stricta (wood sorrel, oxalide)
• Rudbeckia fulgida (black-eyed susan, rudbeckie voyante). This one was a surprise because I was sure this plant was one of my Echinacea purpurea seedlings, but obviously not.
• Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed susan, rudbeckie dressée)
• Solanum ptycanthum (eastern black nightshade, morelle noire de l'est)
• 
• Solidago sp. (goldenrod, verge d'or)

Others

• Antirrhinum majus 'Montego Pink' and NOID (snapdragon, muflier)
• Calibrachoa NOID
• Cerinthe major 'Purple Bells' (honeywort, grand cérinthe)
• Cuphea hyssopifolia 'Lavender Lace' (false heather, étoile de Mexique)
• Glandularia NOID (verbena, verveine)
• Helianthus annuus (sunflower, tournesol)
• Iberis umbellata 'Fairy Mixed' (candytuft, ibéris en ombelle).
• Impatiens walleriana 'Xtreme Pink'™
• Lobelia erinus 'Cascade Sapphire'
• Lobularia maritima 'Snowstorm' (alyssum, alysse odorante)
• Monarda 'Bergamo'. This annual was supposed to "attract butterflies by the dozen" according to Park Seed but the butterflies who visit my garden ignore it.
• Pelargonium NOID (geranium, pélargonium)
• Pentas lanceolata 'New Look Pink'. Another supposed butterfly attractor that local butterflies have ignored.
• Petunia 'Carmine Madness', 'Ultra White', and NOID
• Scaevola aemula (fairy fanflower, scaevola émule)
• Tagetes patula 'Janie Primrose' and 'Janie Tangerine' (French marigold, œillet d'Inde)
• Tagetes tenuifolia 'Lulu' (signet marigold, tagète tachée)
• Thunbergia alata 'Blushing Susie' (black-eyed susan vine, suzanne aux yeux noirs)
• Tropaeolum majus 'Whirlybird Cherry Rose' (nasturtium, capucine)
• Viola 'Penny Purple Picotee'
• Zinnia elegans 'Persian Carpet Mix' and 'Thumbelina Mix'

Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. Be sure to check out what's blooming around the world this August!

What pollinators like

I did a quick tour around the backyard to see which of the flowers are attracting the interest of local pollinators. Eupatorium 'Phantom' (dwarf Joe Pye weed, eupatoire naine) is evidently close enough to our native Eupatoriadelphus maculatus (formerly Eupatorium maculatum) to attract our native bees. (I got this recently at Valumart at 50% off!) Helianthus annuus (sunflower, tournesol) is a reliable bee attractor (unless you get one of the newfangled pollenless varieties, which may be lovely cutflowers but are useless for pollinators and seed-eaters). Echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower, echinacée pourpre), although not quite native here (we're a bit too far north and east), is a favourite of humans as well as pollinators. (Another 50% off deal!) Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan, rudbeckie dressée) is always abuzz. Finally, mint (Mentha sp., menthe), which grows as a weed in the backyard, is a hive of activity when in bloom.

What flowers are attracting pollinators in your garden?