Butterfly Junk Food

This is a tough one for me. I love the butterfly bushes and the butterflies they attract. But they are apparently the lepidopterous equivalent of Snickers, and they are also bad neighbors to more wholesome butterfly food sources.

 Pretty as this picture is, Leah Zerbe explains that we should never plant butterfly bushes again. Rather, we should encourage sustainable, local food sources for the entire food web. To learn what will work better at specific U.S. locations, she recommends Douglas Tallamy's book Bringing Nature Home and the Native Plant Database at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.