Plants that will attract butterflies

Q. What are the plants to grow that attract butterflies? I already have coneflowers, black-eyed susans and vegetables that I see them on all the time. What else could I plant?

A. You made a good start but can do more to attract a wide range of butterflies to your flower garden. It’s important to think not just of the beautiful adult butterflies fluttering about but the earlier, larval stage of this great insect.

Parsley and bronze fennel are two plants favored by caterpillars of the eastern swallowtail butterfly, one of the real beauties. The monarch butterfly’s caterpillars feed on butterfly weed plants (asclepias), as do the grown-up monarchs. Others feed on the young growth of a wide range of landscape plants.

Flowers are a source of nectar for the adult butterfly. Most of the popular summer garden flowers offer nectar that butterflies call food.

Besides the black-eyed susans and coneflowers you already have, other choices include buddleia, butterfly weed, lantana, spirea, obedient plant, zinnias, marigolds, coreopsis, sunflowers, joe-pye weed, verbena, sweet william, phlox, impatiens, heliotrope an, larkspur.

These are sun-loving flowers, and butterflies normally feed in warm sunshine. But don’t plant just one or two of each. Aim for a mass of a few kinds, rather than a bit of many.

Once you’ve made the effort at attracting butterflies, don’t become counterproductive by using pesticides, which can kill both caterpillars and adult butterflies.

As a bonus, provide a small mud puddle for butterflies to enjoy and flat rocks for sunning.

Q. How do I grow new plants from the seeds in blooms of my peace lily?

A. If what you want is more plants, there is an easier and faster way to get them. This is propagation by division of the plant. It is very easy to do once you take the plant out of the pot.

Notice the part of the plant at ground level called the crown, from which leaves rise and roots descend. You may be surprised how many of these crowns are grouped to form the plant you possess.

Taken gently off the mother plant, one or several can be repotted to grow into a fresh plant in a different pot. As you may have noticed, peace lilies grow quite rapidly when the soil is kept moist, the air humid and not much sun hits the leaves.