810-Lancaster Farming,
Butterfly Gardening Attracts Fancy Fliers
Pat Durkin
National Geographic
News Service
WASHINGTON, D.C, Mar
ian Stem scoops up two potted
buddleias, called “butterfly
bushes” because they’re irresisti
ble to the gaudy insect.
“One’s for my mother, one’s for
me,” she says at a Washington
area nursery. “My whole neigh
borhood’s into butterflies.”
The übiquitous butterfly, long
taken for granted in the United
States North America is home
to some 700 species has new
cachet. Attracting butterflies,
whose names are as fancy as their
colors, has become a gardening
trend.
The notion of a back yard alive
with great spangled fritillarics and
black swallowtails is compatible
with the latest gardening
techniques.
It has become increasingly
popular to use fewer chemicals,
lure wildlife with plants and grow
old-fashioned cutting flowers, like
cosmos and hollyhock, which but
terflies prefer. Finding nectar in
the single blossoms of these tum
of-the-century favorites is easier
than in the cabbagelike blooms of
many modem hybrids.
“It didn’t take a rocket scientist
to see the butterfly garden com
ing,” says Doug Jimerson, garden
ing editor of Better Homes and
Gardens magazine, which fea
tured butterflies on its May cover.
The promise of a quick payoff
also helps drive the trend. A gar
den plot as small as a crib mattress
can lure painted ladies and skip
pers the first year. What’s required
arc plenty of fragrant, funnel
shaped flowers, splashes of purple
and no chemicals.
Novice butterfly gardeners look
for a simple approach, says Jill
Gonzales of Behnke Nurseries
Co., one of the largest plant mark
eters in the Washington-Baltimore
area. “They want low-mainte
nance plants that produce flowers
Dairy Cows In The
VINCE MAZZOLA
Everybody’s Science
Dairy cows of the future will
send out radio signals to alert a far
mer when an animal is sick.
A tiny sensor in the cow takes
temperature readings that will be
transmitted every IS minutes to a
computer operating on the dairy
farm. “We put together a ‘health
watch’ system for dairy cows that
can be built using off-the-shelf
equipment,” says Alan M. Lef
court, a U.S. Department of Agri
culture animal scientist.
“Changes in a cow’s tempera
ture patterns can signal the onset of
diseases,” he says. “Our electronic
system is so sensitive it can sense a
problem in the absence of a detect
able temperature rise or other clini
cal symptoms.”
Lefcourt says the system has
monitored 12 cows daily for two
years and has been successful in
catching-the slightest blip in temp
eratures. He is talking to fcedlol
operators and dairy farmers about
I, Saturday, July 24, 1993
most of the summer,” she says.
“More often than not, we send
them home with a buddleia.”
Buddleia has become the unri
valed star of the butterfly-garden
trend. The fast-growing, airy
shrub sends up cluster after cluster
of flowers that are magnets for
monarchs or painted ladies cruis
ing the neighborhood.
Fascination with butterflies
sometimes surfaces where it’s
least expected. Ed Gould, a cura
tor at the National Zoological Park
in Washington, noticed that visi
tors were as enthralled by butter
flies flitting outside the cages as
they were by the animals inside.
“I’d see parents saying to a kid,
‘Look at that zebra,’ he says,
“while the kid was saying, ‘Look
at that butterfly.’ ”
Gould, who has a large butterfly
garden at home, persuaded zoo
administrators to add plants
around the wild-animal exhibits
that would attract even more but
terflies. Signs were erected
explaining the relationship
between a particular plant and a
butterfly species.
“Those signs were so popular
that we put up another one just
about butterfly gardening,” Gould
tells National Geographic. “You’d
be surprised how many people
stop to read it.”
The butterfly-garden phenome
non hasn’t been lost on busines
ses. The Chevron Corp. makes
much of the sand dunes it pre
serves'for a dime-size endangered
blue butterfly near Los Angeles.
Other companies go out of their
way to protect sulfurs, checker
spots and other common
butterflies.
“Half of our certified sites
include butterfly habitat,” says
Darlene Pais of the Wildlife Habi
tat Enhancement Council, a
Washington-based organization of
industries that conserve wildlife
on their grounds.
E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.
doing field tests on full-size herds
to verify his studies at Bcllsville,
Md.
An early alert of sick cows
“would reduce the farmer’s cost of
treatment and increase the cure
rate.” says Lefcourt, a biomedical
engineer for USDA’s Agricultural
Research Service. He says the sys
tem’s cost could be repaid in sav
ings on medical bills and returns
on milk production.
A dairy farmer also could install
an alarm that would automatically
warn the farmer of an abrupt, rela
tively high rise in a cow’s tempera
ture. This could mean an attack of
life-threatening acute mastitis that
needs to be treated immediately,”
he explains.
Lefcourt originally designed the
computer-based system to detect
mastitis, an infection of a cow’s
udder. Mastitis costs U.S. dairy
farmers $2 billion annually for
treatment and lost milk
production.
A cow’s temperature also can be
created a butterfly garden three
years ago at its experimental sta
tion in Wilmington, Del. “It was
just 70 square feet, but our
employees loved it," says Betty
Jean Daisey, who helped plan the
project. “Many of them put in but
terfly gardens at home.”
Inevitably, the butterfly boom
has created a business all its own.
Charmed by thousands of butter
flies attracted to his Florida patio.
Ron Boender dreamed up Butter
fly World, which opened near Fort
Lauderdale five years ago. The
tropical butterfly zoo is patterned
after “butterfly houses” that have
been popular in England for
decades.
Butterfly zoos have opened
since in Georgia and California.
Others are planned in New York,
Oregon and other states.
At least six books on butterfly
gardening have been written in the
past three years. Numerous how
to articles have appeared in news
papers and magazines.
People are signing up for but
terfly outings and visiting butter
fly zoos that are opening up
around the country.
Enthusiasts participate in but
terfly surveys and take butterfly
identification courses. This year
they founded the North American
Butterfly Association, headquar
tered in New York.
During the week of July
more than 100 teams of butterfly
fanciers will count and classify
butterflies in communities from
Oregon to Maiyland. The annual
event is sponsored by the Xerces
Society, a non-profit organization
based in Portland, Ore., and dedi
cated to preserving insects, shell
fish and other animals that have
external skeletons.
“Except for the butterfly,
they’re not the most appealing
creatures,” says Xerces director
Melody Allen. ‘That’s why we
use the butterfly as our poster
species.”
Future
monitored to detect when a cow is
in heat, or estrous, and is ready to
be bred. “Currently, dairy farmers
miss detecting estrous about half
the time,” he says. ‘This mistake
costs farmers over $2OO million
annually.” (Agricultural Research
Service, U.S. Department of
Agriculture)
The monarch , «hown feeding In a butterfly garden at thfe
Esalen institute In Big Sur, Calif., is a common summer visi
tor to North America. While most butterflies stay in one
place, the monarch Is a legendary traveler. East Coast
monarchs migrate 3,000 miles to El Rosario, Mexico, for the
winter.
A yellow swallowtail feeds on the pollen of a red flower in
a private butterfly garden In Sebastopol, Calif. Such gar
dens are on the increase as Americans find new fascination
in butterflies. Some 700 species of the colorful Insect are
native to North America. All it takes to attract them are the
right kinds of flowers and no chemicals. Buddleia is their
favorite.