During fall and winter, when you feel like cleaning up your gardens, remember that many butterfly species rely on standing vegetation for overwintering sites. This Lorquin’s Admiral was visiting our Canada Goldenrod patch this summer. Being an adult butterfly is only a small fraction of their lifecycle. For most of their life, they are out of our sight as an egg, larva (caterpillar), or in a chrysalis developing. If you are trying to have a butterfly garden, it’s nice to have plants for them to feed on as adults, but it’s even more important to have the plants that they lay their eggs on, and to keep vegetation standing where they are overwintering.
In late summer/fall, Lorquin’s Admiral are 1cm long caterpillars, resting in a little sleeping bag rolled in the leaves of their host plants, which include Oceanspray, willows, and fruit trees. They use silk to attach the leaf to the twig so that it doesn’t fall in the autumn. Through the winter, the tiny caterpillar will wait out the wind, rain, and freezing weather hanging in its sleeping bag. This is just one example of a butterfly life cycle. Each native butterfly has a unique life history with special requirements.
Native plants are an incredibly important part of butterfly conservation because the caterpillars of some species can only eat specific native plants. To learn more visit:
www.saanichnativeplants.com/…/SNP_handout_Butterflie…
www.saanichnews.com/…/book-feature-vancouver-islan…/
www.vancouverislandbirds.com/Journal399.html
www.goert.ca/documents/Butterfly_ID_sheet.pdf
