If you like butterflies, you'll want to plant these

Butterflies have spurred the creation of colorful and water-saving gardens not only in South Florida but across the country. Wildflowers, flowering trees, bog plants, fruit trees and especially native plants are the sources of nectar for adult butterflies and food for their larvae.

Among the South Florida trees that are especially useful in butterfly gardens are wild lime, Zanthoxylum fagara, for the endangered Schaus' swallowtail and the giant swallowtail; desert senna, Senna polyphylla, for the cloudless sulphur; fire bush for several of the bright yellow sulphurs; citrus for giant swallowtails.

Many flowers offer nectar to adult butterflies and skippers. (Skippers seem at first glance to be fairly drab butterflies with hooks on their antennae, but if you look carefully, you will find their upper wings to be beautifully marked.)

Butterfly nectar plants offer a source of energy to butterflies that keeps them active during their short lives. Milkweeds are among the best known nectar plants because they also are hosts for the monarch larvae, which eat them to smithereens without actually killing them.

Some additional South Florida nectar plants are butterfly sage (Cordia globosa), which seems to be full of small skippers throughout the day; climbing aster (Aster caroliniensis); fire bush (Hamelia patens); golden dewdrop (Duranta repens), which has blue/purple flowers but golden berries that are responsible for the common name; pentas; verbena and Spanish needles (Bidens alba).

Bidens is a wonderful daisy-like weed that roams the corners of disturbed areas and ill-tended gardens. It is easy to propagate from the seeds that cling to your socks.

Wild coffee is a good nectar plant for ruddy daggerwings. Green shrimp plants are supposed to be nectar sources for the glorious green and brown malachite butterfly, but rotting fruit also has been know to draw them in.

Butterflies may sip nectar opportunistically, but they are absolutely specific about where they lay their eggs. That's why it's important to have particular plants in your garden if you want to attract and keep certain butterflies.

Monarchs go to milkweeds like kittens to milk. Their caterpillars will eat leaves, stems and flowers, but usually don't kill the plant.

Giant swallowtails are the bane of citrus growers (or were until citrus canker came along), and look like big bird droppings on the tops of leaves. Touch one, however, and it sticks out a red forked tongue-like thing called a diveticulium gland. Black swallowtails love plain old garden-variety parsley.

Gulf fritillaries, julias and zebra longwings set their children loose among passion vines, and a native Passiflora suberosa is the creme de la creme.