Tag Archives: lantana

Attracting Gulf Fritillaries to Your Butterfly Garden

Posted by Lesley on February 5, 2011 1 comments

The drunken butterfly I surprised on Wednesday must have told all his friends about my garden.  I’ve seen one every day since.  It’s great because there hasn’t been a Gulf Fritillary around the garden in quite some time.  And since every time I see one, he or she is wing-deep in white flowers, it seems the influx is thanks to the Button sage.   

There are two white Button sage plants in my butterfly garden.  Unlike the Porterweed and Pentas, the Button sage has stayed strong and green through every cold snap.

The sticks in front are the Porterweed, and the droopy brown leaves in the background are the Pentas.  Injured but not out, they both have visible regrowth.  I’m waiting until March to cut everything back – better safe than sorry.  The lush green in front of the Button sage is Lantana.  It’s not blooming right now, but the cold had no effect on it.  Both Button sage and Lantana are in the verbena family. 

Another possible reason for so many Gulf Fritillaries lately is one of the other newbie plants in the garden – the Passionflower vine.  Although Button sage provides nectar to the butterflies, Passionflower feeds and protects the larva.  The passion flowers are toxic.  The toxins stay in the larva and are poisonous to predators.  My vine hasn’t produced and blooms yet, but its corky-stems have shown me some love.   

When the garden used to see Gulf Fritillaries regularly, I had a lot of Mexican sunflowers and Zinnias planted.  Both are nectar sources.

Buddy Walk Butterfly Garden

Posted by Lesley on October 28, 2010 4 comments

Congratulations to Ubermommy; she’s now uber-executive-director too. In her first three months on the job she led her team to a successful Buddy Walk, raising over $65,000 for Manasota BUDS (Bringing Up Down Syndrome).  And congratulations to me on winning the silent auction for a butterfly garden from Mariposa.  John was still feeling guilty over the grapefruit tree, so he literally stood by the list for the last 15-20 minutes of bidding, adding my name the minute anyone else bid. No one was going home with that butterfly garden other than me.  We mutually agreed afterwards that we felt bad about bullying Ubermommy with our eyes when she made an attempt to outbid me.  To make up for it, she got a potted mini butterfly garden of yellow lantana, white button sage and milkweed.

The package was incredible, and the garden is already delivering butterflies.  John’s diligence and devotion won me a cassia tree, passionflower vine, porterweed, two pentas, two milkweeds, three button sages, and three lantanas!  Plus one other unidentified plant that also went to Ubermommy. There were 14 plants in total, and the cassia tree even came with a caterpillar!

I think it will turn into a sulphur butterfly, but then again it could be a moth.  I couldn’t find confirmation in any of my field guides, and I really don’t care either way because the cassia is already attracting so many sulphurs.  They’re an elusive group of butterflies, always flying through the garden but never landing.  With all the different flowers planted over the years, there have been monarchs, fritillaries and swallowtails hanging around but never sulphurs.  Now I have my missing piece – a cassia tree.  It seems like every time I look out at it there’s a sulphur flitting around its flowers.  The big win has greatly improved the view from our kitchen and Florida room windows.  It was as if HGTV came in and gave us a mini-makeover.  Here’s the before:

When we first planted the area, it was beautiful – two pink Perfume Delight roses surrounded by a bed of pink mums.  It held up well for never changing out the mums and very rarely fertilizing the roses, but the weeds and grass took over and it was ready for an overhaul.  Here’s the after:

The only thing it needs now is a little sign that says, “Ella’s Garden” because she’s the reason I walk every year.  Go BUDS!  Go Ella!

Pirate Ella ~ 2010 Buddy Walk

Flowerworks

Posted by Lesley on July 4, 2010 1 comments

It finally feels like July Forth.  After a gloomy, rainy weekend with barely a ray of sunshine, it sounds like a civil war has broken out two streets over.  Ahhh, the sweet sound of American patriotism and excess.  I’ll catch the festivities next year under clearer skies.  This is the display I enjoyed today.

Plumbago

Lantana

U is for Umbel

Posted by Lesley on June 9, 2010 6 comments

umbel: A racemose inflorescence typical of the carrot family in which the pedicels arise from about the same point to form a flat or rounded flower cluster. 

Now to define a couple of the non-U words…Racemose comes from the Latin word racemosus, meaning full of clusters.  Inflorescence is “the mode of development and arrangement of flowers on the axis,” and a pedicel is “a slender basal part of an organism or one of its parts.  Thank you Merriam-Webster!

If I Understand correctly, my lantana is an Umbel:

My First Florida Spring

Posted by Lesley on March 28, 2010 None comments

There are certain things you give up to live in paradise – cold water and strong calves are among them, but  seasons seem to be among the most dear.  Well, Winter?  Not so much.  It’s tough to miss shoveling, but Spring bulbs and Autumn leaves have more appeal.  In Florida, there is Summer and Season.  Summer is the wretchedly hot period between May and September.  And Season is when the snowbirds arrive to take advantage of the good weather we true Floridians suffer for during the summer.  But snowbirds turned to suckas this year because we actually had a winter.  And while walking through the garden this weekend, it dawned on me that we’re having a spring too!  After the first few years of living in Florida your eyes gradually adjust to the constant green, and your senses dull to the seasonal changes.  December through February on the Weather Channel seem more like a movie than the news when you live with a sweet 70-80 degree temperature margin.  But this year Winter smacked us around and blew the leaves off everything!  I had to say goodbye to the jasmine, mango and a couple of crotons, but here are a few of the beauties I’m watching bloom back to life:

Shooting Star

Lantana

Bleeding Heart