Butterfly Host Plants

Gardening l Life Cycle l Rearing l Houses & Farms l Monarchs l Pictures l Activities

Fun Facts l Live Releases l Butterfly Specimens l Gift Sites l Links l Store l HOME

Butterfly Host Plants are important when you create your butterfly garden to provide a site for the butterfly to lay eggs and also food source for the emerging caterpillar. Be prepared for heavy munching on your host plants!

Because tiny caterpillars cannot travel far to find their own food, the female butterfly locates and lays her eggs on only the type of plant that the caterpillar can use as food. Most species of caterpillars are particular about the type of plants they can eat. If the egg was not placed on the correct plant, the caterpillar hatching from that egg will not survive. Many gardeners do not like to see plants in their gardens that have been chewed on by bugs. To avoid this, you may want to locate your butterfly host plants in areas that are not highly visible, but still a short distance from the butterfly nectar plants. If you do not provide host plants, you will have fewer butterflies.

Many native trees and other plants found in and around our yards are host plants for caterpillars. There are a variety of plants that can be included in a butterfly garden that are excellent host plants. The Native Plants Database is a great resource for folks interested in selecting native plants for their yard.

Here’s a list of common butterflies and their preferred host plants:
Butterfly Type	Caterpillar Food / Host Plant
Alfalfa butterfly	Alfalfa, clovers, deerweed
Anise Swallowtail	Sweet Fennel, Lomatium, Citrus
Black swallowtail	Dill, parsley, fennel, carrot
Buckeye	plantains, gerardias, toadflax, snapdragons, false loosestrifes
Cabbage White	Many plants in mustard family, cabbage family
Checkered skipper	Mallow, hollyhock
Checkered white	Tumble mustard
Clouded sulfur	Alfalfa, clover
Cloudless Sulfur	Ornamental Cassia, Canary Bird Bush
Common hairstreak	mallow family , hollyhock , rose and marsh mallows
Common Snout Butterfly	Hackberry
Dogface Butterfly	lead plant, false indigo, prairie clover
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail	sycamore, willow
Edwards fritillary	Nuttall's violet
Peris Brassicae	Broccoli, cabbage (mustard family)
Gorgone checkerspot	Sunflowers
Hackberry butterfly	Hackberry
Melissa blue	Wild licorice, alfalfa, etc.
Monarch	Milkweed
Mourning cloak	Willow, aspen, cottonwood, elm
Orange sulfur	Alfalfa, vetch, pea
Painted Lady	Thistle, hollyhock, sunflower
Pale Swallowtail	Redberry, California Coffeeberry, California Lilac, Holly-leafed Cherry
Question Mark	nettle, elm, hackberry, hops, false nettles
Red Admiral	nettle, false nettle, pellitory
Red-Spotted Purple	Wild cherry, oak, poplar, hawthorn, willow
Silver-spotted skipper	Wild licorice, locust, etc.
Spicebush Swallowtail	spice bush, sassafrass
Two-tailed swallowtail	Green ash, chokecherry
Variegated fritillary	Various, including pansy
Viceroy Butterfly	willow, poplar, apple
Weidemeyer's admiral	Willow, aspen, cottonwood
Western tiger swallowtail	Willow, cottonwood, chokecherry
Wood nymph	Grasses
Zebra Swallowtail	Pawpaw