Tuberose (polianthus tubersoa)

Finally monsoon hit and rains started. Compared to last year when it was almost drought this year it has been raining good, in fact very good.So those plants which were waiting for high humidity to send blooms started to wake up. For this monday here are these two beauties.
This butterfly treated my soil bed as her guest house probably and sent whole night clinging to this jasmine leaves. I captured her at night with auto flash and macro. She seemed drunk to me as the flash and macro both did not make her embarrassed at all. In fact, i was almost thinking she is here for the photo shoot. This photo is also included in the Gardening gone wild Picture this photo contest

The second photo for this Monday is the tube rose flowers. I almost forgot murraya and my arabian jasmine when these started to flower. I planted around 50 bulbs in pots and this is the first one to flower. Would surely post separate on these warm climate flowering bulbs continuing the series.

For Macro monday Visit Lisa's Chaos
For Mosaic Monday Visit Mosaic Monday
For Flowers from today, visit http://flowersfromtoday.blogspot.com/

Dahlia flowers

For more wordless wednesday posts visit http://www.wordlesswednesday.com/newhome/

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.

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.