Butterfly Food

Butterfly food varies from species to species. Also, it depends on which stage of life cycle it is in. Caterpillars eat solid food like leaves and root vegetables while an adult butterfly only sips nectar from the flowers, fruits and trees. Butterflies feed on natural habitat, but if you want to attract them to your backyard, all you need to do is plant their favorite plants and flowery shrubs in home garden or make homemade butterfly food.

What do they feed on?

Butterfly food of adult butterflies consists of nectar from flowers, fruits and trees. Most butterflies eat only certain species of plants while some will eat from only one plant variety. For instance, Monarchs feeds on milkweed plants. The caterpillar eats the leaves or twigs while the adult monarch sucks the nectar from its flowers. The Pearl Crescent caterpillars only feed on plants from the aster family. Some butterflies like the North American Harvester of the eastern U.S. are carnivorous and eat wooly aphids. The females lay her eggs right in the middle of masses of aphids so that when they hatch, the caterpillars can feed on them.

Popular butterfly food

There are a variety of plants that are butterfly’s favorite foods especially when they are in the caterpillar stage. The most popular plants for butterflies are aster, lilac, cottonwood, hackberry, hollyhock, clover, baby’s tears, fennel, grasses, nettle, milkweed, plum, mallow, spicebush, violet, willow and parsley.

Adult butterflies are attracted to flowery plants to draw nectar. These include chrysanthemum, aster, buckwheat, clover, daisy, lavender, daylily, violet, phlox, sunflower, dogbane, honey suckle, oregano, marigold and butterfly weed.

Homemade butterfly food

If you live in an apartment where you do not have the space to plant a butterfly garden, you can still attract butterflies in your surroundings by preparing homemade butterfly food. The most common food for butterflies would be sugar water solution. You can prepare it in the proportion of four parts water and one part sugar. Add colors like yellow, red or blue into the solution container and place them on the window sill. You can also soak bright color sponges in sugar water solution and hang them from trees or plants in your vicinity.

Butterflies also feed on dung, mud puddles and rotten or over-ripe fruits. They also get some of the nutrients from pet poops which may be lying in your backyard.

Basically, it is very easy to attract butterflies. You can produce your own butterfly food by planting flowering plants or simple sugar water solution.