Feature Article - for release   Sunday June 21, 2009

Dan Culbert - Extension Horticulture Agent 

Our Colorful Main Street  

Last Valentine’s Day, a group of dedicated Master Gardeners, along with the help of Main Street Okeechobee and several donors and sponsors, installed a colorful garden for residents of Okeechobee to enjoy.  Today I’m pleased to announce that the garden is up and growing.  It may make a neat place to go visit with Dad as we celebrate Father’s Day.  

To date, I’ve identified seven different species of butterflies that before this garden had rarely been seen downtown. An additional gift from The South Florida Water Management District allowed us to recently add some more new plants to the garden.  With a little luck from passing thunderstorms, we may soon see additional kinds of “eye-candy” flit by as they visit downtown Okeechobee.

Today’s column will identify those kinds of butterflies we have seen, and hopefully will encourage you to visit Park #6.  Or, take a look at the website we have created to learn more about butterfly gardening, Florida Friendly landscaping, and to publicly thank the work of many volunteers and sponsors that made this place happen.

 

Butterfly Gardening Basics

Butterflies are no different than other kinds of wildlife: they all need the basics of food, water and shelter to survive.  Since this wildlife is an insect, it goes though metamorphosis as it goes from an egg to an adult.  Small eggs are placed on plants that will soon be eaten up, and then they form a resting stage – a pupa – where the magic continues.  The adult butterfly emerges to sip nectar from flowers, find a mate and then deposits a bunch of eggs so the cycle can continue.

Some butterflies are not too picky about what they need to survive, while others specialize in feeding on particular kinds of plants.  Butterfly gardeners need to plant a variety of plants, some of which will be chewed up, while others grow flowers that give the adults that sweet sip of energy needed to flit across Florida Friendly Yards.

Oh yes, don’t forget that they will also need some moisture and require that insecticide use be minimized or eliminated. Bug killers that kill caterpillars mean that butterflies will not be around to brighten your day.  So we have to tolerate a bit of ragged plants if we want to enjoy these winged wonders. 

 

Our Garden Visitors

Here is a list of the butterflies that I have positively identified as visiting our garden; if you see others please let us know so we may add them to our list.

 American Lady  (Vanessa virginiensis). It took me a while to track down the name for this fairly common butterfly.  It has a patchwork of orange-red and brown colors on its wings, but the wing edges are brown; some white round spots also are seen back from the wing edges.  The bottoms of the wings are a mixture of grays and browns.  At first glance they look like they have only four legs, but these members of the brush-footed butterfly family have small fore legs that are not used for walking.  I found them on the Porterweed, but they will go for many different flowers in our garden.

Cassius Blue (Leptotes cassius).  These very small fast flying butterflies really like to feed on the Plumbago in our garden. They flit around very fast, and it’s pretty hard to get a good look at them unless you stand still and wait patiently.

 

 

 

Checkered White (adult), (Pontia (=Pieris) protodice). This white colored butterfly with some small black wing markings was seen earlier in the spring.  It is not that common on site at this time.   The larva is the southern cabbageworm, which can be a pest on some garden plants.

 

Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae.  In recent days there seems to be a good crowd of these orange colored butterflies small with black spots and lines running down the wings.  Not only are they seen as butterflies, but the passionflower vines on the garden pergola are now being chewed up by many orange worms with small black spines.  These are the caterpillars that have made our garden their home.

 

Monarch  (Danaus plexippus).  Another orange colored butterfly, this one is fairly common in butterfly gardens.  The large orange brown cells on the wings are surrounded by black lines, and have some with spots in the black band along the wing tips.  Monarchs love milkweeds, but recently these plants went to seed, so we cut them back to rejuvenate the plants.  The monarch will be back as soon as the plants regrow with our summer rains.  

 

Zebra Longwing,  (Heliconius charitonia).  Our state butterfly has been seen in our garden, but it has been an infrequent visitor.  The long black wings are marked with lemon yellow stripes across them.  If you really want to see some of these Zebras, take a ride up to Sue Arnold’s Wildlife Center; they had a very successful open house on June 20^th.

 

 

 For the Future

In a future column I will talk about the different kinds of plants that have been planted in the FYN Butterfly Garden.  I’ll be able to comment on both the larval feeding plants and the colorful nectar plants and how they have adapted to our area.   Please give me your observations regarding the plants as well. 

I’d also like to recognize our wonderful FYN Program Assistant Angela Sachson who not only provided the vision and leadership to our Florida Friendly landscaping programs for the past year and a half, but also came up with the concept for this butterfly garden as well.  Our FYN grant has now been exhausted this month, so we have to say thank you and best wishes to her in her new endeavors.  (We have applied for another grant to keep her on board, but as of this date the funding agency has not given us their response – Let’s keep our fingers crossed!)

I’ve placed more information on our Okeechobee web page.  If you need additional information on Florida Friendly butterfly gardening, please visit our webpage, http://okeechobee.ifas.ufl.edu, send an email to okeechobee@ifas.ufl.edu  or call us at 863-763-6469.  Local residents can stop by our office at 458 Hwy 98 North in Okeechobee.  Go Gators!

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Trade names, where used, are given for the purpose of providing specific information. They do not constitute an endorsement or guarantee of products named, nor does it imply criticism of products not named. The Florida Cooperative Extension Service - Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer authorized to provide research, educational information, and other services to individuals and institutions that function without regard to race, color, sex, age, handicap, or national origin.  Florida Cooperative Extension Service / IFAS / University of Florida.  Millie Ferrer, Interim Dean. Last update: 06/19/2009.  This page is maintained by Dan Culbert