Abstract
One way the public can engage in insect conservation is through wildlife gardening, including the growing of insect-friendly flowers as sources of nectar. However, plant varieties differ in the types of insects they attract. To determine which garden plants attracted which butterflies, we counted butterflies nectaring on 11 varieties of summer-flowering garden plants in a rural garden in East Sussex, UK. These plants were all from a list of 100 varieties considered attractive to British butterflies, and included the five varieties specifically listed by the UK charity Butterfly Conservation as best for summer nectar. A total of 2659 flower visits from 14 butterfly and one moth species were observed. We performed a principal components analysis which showed contrasting patterns between the species attracted to Origanum vulgare and Buddleia davidii. The “butterfly bush” Buddleia attracted many nymphalines, such as the peacock, Inachis io, but very few satyrines such as the gatekeeper, Pyronia tithonus, which mostly visited Origanum. Eupatorium cannibinum had the highest Simpson’s Diversity score of 0.75, while Buddleia and Origanum were lower, scoring 0.66 and 0.50 respectively. No one plant was good at attracting all observed butterfly species, as each attracted only a subset of the butterfly community. We conclude that to create a butterfly-friendly garden, a variety of plant species are required as nectar sources for butterflies. Furthermore, garden plant recommendations can probably benefit from being more precise as to the species of butterfly they attract.
Highlights
Butterflies are an important group of insects that can act as pollinators and environmental indicators but are facing widespread decline (Jennersten 1984; Thomas 2005, Polus et al 2007; Thomas et al 2011; Forister et al 2010)
One way the public can engage in insect conservation is through wildlife gardening, including the growing of insect-friendly flowers as sources of nectar
These plants were all from a list of 100 varieties considered attractive to British butterflies, and included the five varieties listed by the UK charity Butterfly Conservation as best for summer nectar
Summary
Butterflies are an important group of insects that can act as pollinators and environmental indicators but are facing widespread decline (Jennersten 1984; Thomas 2005, Polus et al 2007; Thomas et al 2011; Forister et al 2010). There is a huge variety of ornamental flowers available which differ in the number and diversity of insects they attract (Garbuzov and Ratnieks 2015; Garbuzov et al 2015). With such choice, gardeners seeking advice as to which species to plant may turn to one of the many lists of ‘‘insect-friendly’’ garden flowers that are available. Vickery (1998) was the only list reviewed by Garbuzov and Ratnieks (2014a) which included information on its assembly Even this list provides little information on how its recommendations were derived, or which butterfly species are attracted to which plants. The aim was not to compare overall attractiveness to butterflies, but to determine differences among plant species in the butterfly species they attract
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