| Variable Checkerspot pupa - photo credit: Nancy Bauer
Hosting Butterflies When planting butterfly host plants, we often think of pipeline and monkeyflowers, but many local butterflies use trees and shrubs as caterpillar food plants. Of course, it would be much harder to see eggs and cats on these larger plants, assuming they aren't quickly finished off by their many insect and bird predators! Take oaks and willows, for example. Oaks host the Mournful Duskywing and the beautiful California Sister, a large dark butterfly with wihite markings and bright orange spots on the wing tips. One of the first butterflies to show up in the spring, the Mourning Cloak, may hibernate in tree bark as an adult during the cold months. This large, dark brown butterfly with a pale yellow fringe uses willows as a host plant. So does the Lorquin’s Admiral. It is smaller than the California Sister, but it, too, has orange-tipped wings. The host plants of the Western Tiger Swallowtail—that big black and yellow butterfly—include willows and sycamores. The Tiger Swallowtails in San Francisco are known to rely on the London plane-trees, a sycamore hybrid, that have been planted throughout the city. The Pale Swallowtail, a cream and black version of the Tiger Swallowtail, may lay its eggs on several native shrubs, including California coffeeberry and hollyleaf cherry. One of the small blue butterflies, Spring Azure, uses creambush (Holodiscus), California buckeye, ceanothus and the red-twigged dogwood as host plants. And let’s not forget those tiny grass skippers in tones of copper and amber who depend mostly on sedges and native bunchgrasses! Hairgrass (Deschampsia), California brome, Elymus spp., June grass, California oat grass, Carex spp., for example. Nancy Bauer |
Butterflies and more!