Top Butterfly attracting flowers

Though i would submit a separate post on how to attract butterflies specially in lahore, right now i would focus on only which plants i have found attractive for butterflies.

1- First, butterflies are cold blooded insects so they love sunshine. They tend to prefer area which receives maximum sunshine.
2- Choose flowers rich in nectar. Have you wondered why there is not a lot of butterflies seen on Roses? nectar!!!!! Nectar rich flowers are usually single petal flowers having large seeds visible in the center. See the example of Dahlia below:

Good for butterflies, Nectar Rich










Not butterfly friendly, no nectar









Daisy is another common example. Others good flowers include following:

• scabiosa (pincushion flower)
• Lantana(specially blue flowered)
• buddleia (butterfly bush, white color variety survives in plains while purple one in hills)
• Asclepias curassavica(tropical milkweed)
• lemon/orange/tangerine
• Kniphofia(red hot pocker)
• Allium
• Cosmos
• Single petal dahlia
• Hibiscus
  

And last but not least Senecio confusus vine. In this march i had more than 200 blooms on this vine and every single day it was surrounded by butterflies.






Butterfly on my senecio vine





3-Choose flowers with sweet fragrance. One example is Murraya (Marwa, marwi), i have seen hundreds of butterflies on one single murraya tree near my home.

Note that butterflies usually appear in lahore from February-October. Also, Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.

Moon flower blooming in real time

Swallotail butterfly on cosmos flower

I love butterflies and i cannot resist capturing them sipping from flowers. This is why i like butterfly attracting flowers. During my visit to Punjab University trip to Khanaspur trip, i captured these butterflies sipping from flowers in small botanical garden of Punjab University Khanaspur, NWFP.

Khizra Nursery - Haripur

This plants nursery http://www.khizranursery.com/ is situated in main G.T road haripur. I bought so sought after Brugmansias from them. OMG, the flowers were so huge, almost more than my hand's length and fragrant i was just amazed. I tried but could not find anu brugmansia from lahore. May be because its a toxic plant which usually all daturas do. I also bought Some pelargoniums from them. If any one is after burgmansias, they are definitelty worth trying.

I also plan to get seeds for Datura metel bellarina from UK for their dwarf nature and fragrant flowers all summer long. Their seeds, toxic though, are easy to germinate in lahore and it flowers first year from seed. Mine's not starting to bloom yet but i have my fingers crossed, let see.