Discover Florida Nature
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 Florida
Nature: Native Butterfly Attracting Plants (6) |
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Browse through our alphabetical list of native Florida plants that
encourage butterflies into your garden, and find the perfect choices for
your Florida butterfly garden! Plants that have an asterisk beside their
name are especially high in nectar. Vanilla
Plant (Carphephorus odoratissimus)-The vanilla plant is a
composite plant of the southeastern U.S., having purplish flower heads
and vanilla-scented leaves used to flavor tobacco. Pineland Purple or
False Vanilla leaf is native to the
Pine flatwoods, palmetto prairies and possibly open fields and
scrubby areas across southern and south-central Florida, spreading up
the Florida west coast to near
Homosassa Springs
in the central half of Florida. It is an excellent native flowering
plant with beautiful smallish deep purple to lavender and possibly
violet flowers in clusters and a thin stem. The vanilla plant is very
beautiful as it seems to form seas of purple flowers stretching across
palmetto prairies, poking up from the
saw palmettos, with a widely
spaced overstory of slash or longleaf pines, allowing a high-to- medium
amount of sunlight through. Vanilla Plant is a great flowering native
plant that often attracts pollinating insects or butterflies! Purpletop
Verbena
(Verbena spp)*- Purpletop verbena is an erect, clump-forming perennial
with stiff, widely branched stems. It can reach 3-6 feet in height with
an open, airy spread of 1-3 feet. The sandpapery stems and branches
grow in an upright pattern and are square in cross section. Most of the
leaves are clustered in a mounded rosette at the base of the plant. The
relatively scarce stem leaves are opposite, 3-5 inches long and clasping
(i.e. the leaves have no petioles and their bases wrap around the
stem). The Verbena flowers are purple, a quarter-inch across, and born
in rounded clusters about 2-3 inches across. Botanists call this type of
inflorescence a cyme: a flower cluster in which the center flower
opens first, and later-opening flowers are on the ends of lateral
branches that arise from below the first flower. Purpletop verbena
displays its showy flowers all summer long, until the first frost of
autumn. Viburnum
(Viburnum spp)- Besides having attractive foliage and growth
habits, the best viburnums also offer lovely, sometimes even fragrant,
flowers. Many also boast colorful fruits and stunning fall foliage. In
addition, the fruits are appealing to birds and other wildlife. Viburnum
is native to Florida, but their range extends to South America. They are
admired for their foliage, flowers, and fruit. Most viburnums flower in
spring. The sometimes-fragrant flowers range from white and cream to
pink-flushed or wholly pink. They are born in terminal or axillary
panicles, clusters, corymbs, or cymes, which are often spherical or
domed. Some species have blooms similar to the flattened heads of
lacecap hydrangeas. Viburnums are usually shrubs, but their habits vary.
Viburnums excel as specimen plants or as anchors in mixed borders. You
won't find a more versatile group of shrubs for hedges or for massing in
groups, since viburnums hold their own in every season. Wild
Petunia (Ruellia spp)- Resembling the annual garden petunias,
wild petunia produces a single five lobed, trumpet-shaped flower, that
is1-2 inches long and wide, and emerging where each leaf joins the stem.
Although it superficially resembles a garden petunia, which is in the
potato family, wild petunia is a member of the Acanthus family, to which
the cultivated “shrimp plant” and “Black-Eyed-Susan” also belong. The
flowers of wild petunia vary in color from pale lavender to medium
bluish-purple. On some plants the stems and the paired, egg-shaped
leaves are hairy. The plant grows 1-2 feet tall, although a little
scraggly. Blooming June through September, the blossoms last only a day
or two, but new flowers form in succession. The plant self-seeds, and
new shoots can be seen throughout the garden from a single planting.
Wild Petunias are easily transplanted. Germination from seeds is low,
but summer stem cuttings will root well. This plant was named for an
early French herbalist Jean Ruella.
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