 Okay, welcome back to the Spring Fever Garden Forums, and we saved the best for last about that chance. But before we close it up for this spring, we've got a few thank yous we need to say. First of all, thanks to the county agents out there. This broadcast is being being the 30 county offices, so thank you to the county agents and the master gardeners who are hosting this. I hope all your gardeners out there appreciate the hard work and dedication of your county agent. They open up their county office four nights for these programs, and we just thank you to the county agents. So wonderful. Also, got to give my thanks to Bob Burch with Ad Communications. You know, you just saw Bob at his finest a few moments ago. The system crashed, and then Bob just did a few clicks, and just a few moments, the system was going statewide again, so Bob, you know, just, I really, you are making such a huge difference through this program. We could not do this program without you, and you've been with us from the very beginning and just a great partner, and thank you for what you do. Also, I want to just give you a heads up that we need to evaluate our program. We strive to give you the best quality program we can. So the county agents, they did get an evaluation sheet, so we would, we really would appreciate if we get your comments, tell us what we're doing right, tell us what we can improve. Again, we want to do whatever we can to make the spring fever garden forms. We just want to keep growing, and it's growing strong now. Let's keep it going. So if you can complete this and get with your county agent tonight, that's great. If you're too busy, you could scan an email list to me if you want, or you can mail it to my office, the address is at the bottom of the second page. Or, you know, if you have registered, or if you're online and not in a county office, any registered, I will be sending an online evaluation form. You don't need to do both. Please, just one or the other, but we really would appreciate your comments for our program. So with that out of the way, let's get going to our last talk, and we're talking about butterflies. Butterflies, that's a fun critter. Everybody loves butterflies, and there's a lot of folklore surrounding butterflies. I know that in many cultures, a butterfly symbolizes hope and good fortune in the future, because when you just think about it, like, what was a butterfly? Just a creepy, ugly caterpillar, and then before you know it, it can transform itself into a majestic winged, beautiful creature. So there's always hope, and I remember once when I was taking a walk in a garden and worth another gardener, and this butterfly was circling all over me, and then landed on my shoulder, and she told me that was an angel overlooking and watching me. So I thought that was interesting. Another one, it's kind of creepy, can't you hear this one? How about this one in Taiwan? I lived in Taiwan for seven years, and the word for butterfly is very similar to the word for long life, and so, you know, I don't know, heck, I don't know if any of this folklore is true with butterflies, but everybody loves butterflies. Their beautiful colors and delicate movements are just absolutely wonderful and enchanting, and here to tell us how to attract more butterflies to our landscape is Jan Kanotl. She's an extension entomologist for NDSU, so Jan, welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom. So we'll go ahead and get started with the PowerPoint, and I hope that also that you have the butterfly garden in North Dakota fact sheet that was sent out. And co-authors with that was Esther McGinnis and Gerald Falske. So just a little bit of history, like Tom said, there is a lot of folklore that goes along with butterflies, and you might wonder where the name butterflies came from. Well, originated in Britain, they had these beautiful yellow brimstone butterflies flying around early in the spring in the woodlands, so people referred to them as butterfly, and that's actually how the name butterfly came about. Well, it is in the insect group, and they do have the typical three body parts, head, thorax, and abdomen, a pair of antennae, two pairs of wings, and a hardened exoskeleton. So butterflies in specific belong to the order Lepidoptera, and they're characterized by their scaly wings, and that's what we get from seeing those beautiful colors on the wings for butterflies. And some of the scales on the wings are a tremendous number, about 125,000 per square inch. So that's quite a bit, and you can get a lot of different colors. And some of the colors are related to the light being reflected as well. And sometimes you can even tell the age of a butterfly by looking at the scales on the wing. As you know, the scales, when you pick up a butterfly by the wings, the scales will rub off easily. Well, we can kind of tell from how many scales are on the wing by how old the butterfly is. When it first emerged from the chrysalis, the scales are very pristine, and as it starts to age, the scales get rubbed off and duller in color. So butterflies are typically active during the day as well. In the order Lepidoptera, we also have moths, but they're active in the evening. Just a little bit about the life cycle of a butterfly. It really varies species to species. Some butterflies only have one generation a year, and other species will have multiple generations, like the monarch butterfly. And here we have the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. They have a complete metamorphosis or life cycle, so they have four different stages. The egg, larvae or caterpillar, pupae or chrysalis, and the adult. And the amount of time can vary too, depending on the insect. But the pupae or the chrysalis, I should also mention, is more of a resting stage. So it's the non-feeding stage. So then you get the adult butterfly emerging from that. And the caterpillars are the ones that do most of the feeding on different plants. We'll talk a little bit about the host plants. So there's a lot of different species of butterflies. In the world, there's about 16,000 species. And of course, as you move down towards the tropics, the rainforest, there's many more species. In North America, there's about 7,500 species. In North Dakota, we're called here, we have about only 161 species. But the main thing about a butterfly gardening is very similar to like planting a pollinator garden. The location, location, location, very important. They love the hot, sheltered locations to plant your flowers in. And also, if you don't have a sheltered spot, you can use fences, trullises or brushes or other trees to provide some protection. And also, the adult butterfly feeds on nectar sources from the flowers, but they also need water. So you can provide feeders for them like the one on the right. That one provides both nectar and then you can also put pieces of fruit on top of it. And then also, you can plant the different plants to attract butterflies. They feed on the nectar on flowers or you can attract, use different plants for the caterpillars or larvae. And then we'll discuss those. But again, we don't recommend insecticide use. You may get some pests that come in on your flowers or plants for the caterpillars. But in general, you know, we don't recommend using insecticides if you're trying to attract butterflies. Because most of the insecticides today are fairly specific to all insects and they will kill the butterflies. So when you're planting your flowers, you want to have a continuous blooming of different flowers to provide nectar. And these are just some of the examples for early summer flowering perennials that are good nectar sources for butterflies. L.A.M., Chai's, Golden, Alexandria, and Pinks. And unfortunately, I don't have time to show pictures of all the beautiful flowers. And then here's some of the mid-summer flowers. Some of my favorite is Black Eyed Susan and Catnip and Flock's, Russian Sage and Sunflowers. Another one of my favorite. Actually, they all are. But again, planting at diversity because different butterflies like different flowers. And then fall flowering perennials. This is probably a place where a lot of people forget about the fall. But it's very important for the monarch, for example, it's going to be doing its reverse migration south to Mexico. The overwintering grounds. And for other butterflies, they need to fatten up as well for the overwintering. Some of them do overwinter as adults in North Dakota. So the Goldiprods, Aster, Sedium, and Sneezeweed are very important. And here's some annuals you can plant to fill in between those perennials. The butterflies and the pollinators, too, I really love these annuals here. And these are all listed in the fact sheet. And we can't forget about the male feeds. They're very important for the larval caterpillar of the monarch butterfly. And there's several different species that can grow here in North Dakota. So if you have the heavier or drier soils, you can select the one that is most adapted to your area. And I'd like to thank Esther for putting this table together. And then there's a lot of different nectar sources, very depending on the butterfly, as I mentioned. And then this is just part of table four. The whole table is available in the fact sheet. But you can see which plants are attractive to different butterflies. So if you wanted to attract the black swallowtail, you know, you'd plant flots, bee bombs, sunflower, etc. So this can provide you with some guidelines if you have a favorite butterfly. And again, some of the flowers have been genetically modified through breeding and so forth to produce more petals. And this replaces some of the reproductive parts, so then that particular flower on the right doesn't have any nectar. So make sure you're buying flowers that do produce nectar for the butterflies. I mean, it's okay to plant a few plants with no nectar, but to a butterfly, you can never have enough flowers. And then there's always the caterpillars. That's a completely different looking from the butterflies. A lot of people don't recognize the larvae or the caterpillars, but they also have different food sources. So you may want to also plant some of the food sources of the caterpillar as well as the nectar sources for the butterfly. And there's lots of different ways to identify butterflies. You will need a good pair of binoculars so you can see the butterflies. And basically we can use these butterflies through binoculars. The east and west are one of my favorites. They have beautiful color pictures and a real inexpensive book is one of the golden guides. And there's a lot of other field guides out there through Audubon, Kauffman, and so forth. But there is a Butterflies of North Dakota book, so you may want to get a hold of that. It's from a professor retired now, Dr. Royer from Minot State University. And he's put together a beautiful book on the butterflies of North Dakota with several color pictures as well. And then you'll need a different set of books for identifying the caterpillars. So they do look completely different from the butterflies, of course. So let's go through just some of the groups of the butterflies. These are the skippers, Hesper, today. And they kind of look like the evening setting sun. Hesper means evening sun. And the orange is referred to the setting of the sun. So they're a fairly small butterfly. And there's about 42 species in North Dakota. And skipper refers to the erratic flight. And we do have the endangered species that's under the threatened status, the Dakota skipper in North Dakota. It's mainly out in the north central region. And I helped out with some trapping for it when I was back in Minot near Garrison. And we did find it out there. But these are just some examples over on the lower right of some of the skippers we have in North Dakota. And for identification, besides the color and small size, you can look at the tenor club. If you're up close enough, they're either hooked or it's twice as long as wide. And they in general hold their antenna quite wide. If you look at the top picture on the right, you can see the base is fairly wide. And other butterflies, it's more narrow and V-shaped. Then the larvae are pretty distinguished looking. They have a neck behind the head. And they generally spin silken tubes with leaves or grasses like the Dakota skipper that one uses some little blue stem. Swallow tails. This is probably one of the favorite of a lot of people, the Canadian tiger swallow tail in the black. But they're quite large butterflies, very distinguished looking with their little tails on the hind wings. And there's about nine species in North Dakota. And for the larvae, they have an interesting feature where they can invert an organ on the head. It's called the Osmaterian. And it's used as a defensive mechanism against predators that might be preying on it. And it also emits a fall order. And you can see the chrysalis too on the leaves. They're resting with their hand up. Then we have the solfers and whites of the purity. They can range in color and they have different spots on the wings. And of course, this is the one I mentioned earlier from yellow color that created the word butterfly. There's about 14 different species in North Dakota. And this one you might be familiar with if you've gardened, because there's the imported cabbage worm. And that's the critter there on the caterpillar on the lap that likes to get into your cabbage in two holes. But they have kind of a minute hares next to the body. And this one too, the pupae or chrysalis rests with the head up. And then it has like a little silken string that supports it about the middle. And there's a gloss of our wing butterflies. And these are one of my favorites, the blues. And they're very beautiful or brightly colored, the wings. And on the hind wing, they do have the tails as well. And another characteristic which you probably won't see unless you get pretty close is the eye actually touches the base of the antenna there. There's about 29 different species in North Dakota. And here's the same group, the coppers and the hair streaks and the summers. And they're kind of an interesting group for the larvae or caterpillars because they're kind of slug-like. So it's more difficult to see a head area. And then you'll see ants feeding along with them. And that's because the larvae excretes a honeydew and the ants feed on the honeydew. And then in turn, the ants provide protection for the larvae against predators. So it's a symbiotic relationship. And then we have the brush-footed butterflies, nymphalidae, which is our monarch is in this group. But one of the main characteristics is you'll only see four legs when they're walking around on the flowers. That's because the front pair of legs is actually reduced and it's used for tasting. And there's about 54 species in North Dakota. It will break this large group down into seven subgroups. And the larvae are very diverse, but often a lot of them have spines on them. And the chrysalis or the pupae hangs downward from a cremaster, which is the point where it's attached. And the first group is the fritillaries. They're medium and they're pretty much black and orange. On the under surface of the hind wing, you'll see silver spots. And you'll see with the two on the left, you'll see the right part of the wing is detached from the body. And that's the underside of the wing. So on the left is the top surface. And on the right is the under surface. And you can see the beautiful silver spots. And there's about 11 different species in North Dakota. Then we have the chrysalis or chick response. As well, they're black and orange, but they have a more solid black margin on the wing and the antenna spoon shape. There's about eight different species. And then we have the angle wings or tortoise shell butterflies. And the morning cloak is in this group. They're medium to large size. You can see the edge of the wing is kind of scallop shaped and rough. And if you look at the top surface, it could be very colorful. But the under wing is kind of mimics tree bark and leaves. And these are one of the only group of butterflies that aren't really attracted to flowers for nectar. But they feed on tree sap flows and fermenting fruit. And there's about 10 species. You will see them feeding on nectar, but they prefer the fruit and the sap. Here's some of the others. Again, you can see the scalloping and the wing edge. And then the underside and the lower right, that kind of looks like the bark of a tree or a leaf. And then we have the thistle butterflies. This is the painted lady, which migrates up in the red admiral. And they're medium with bright colors. And they typically have eye spots on the ventral side of the hind wings. And there's four species. And then we have the admiral, the viceroy and the white admiral. And they're pretty large with very colorful patterns. And they have a leaf antenna club. And they like to fly. They're kind of circle with very flat wing glide. And there's only about three or four species in North Dakota. And then we got the milkweed butterfly, sir, large again. And they have the typical orange wings with the black veins. Everybody knows the monarch, I think. And they like to flap and then they follow that with a long glide. And then we do have mimicry with the viceroy and the monarch. The viceroy in the lower right is mimicking the monarch. And the reason why is it because it has defensive chemicals, the monarch from feeding on the milkweed. So it makes it toxic to predators. So the viceroy is trying to mimic that so it's protected as well. And then we got the brush-footed butterflies. They're medium-sized and most of them are kind of dull colored, more like what you would expect with a moth. But they often have eye spots as well on the wings. And one of my favorites is the common woodnip. You can see that if you actually collect some, you'll see that the vein is very swollen at the base of the four wings. There's about 11 different species. And in the fact sheet, you'll see a calendar that shows you when the different butterflies come in or occur in North Dakota. And some of them have more than one generation a year here. So they might come in June and then again in August. But most of them are most common. This probably July is probably the month where you're most likely to see a majority of the butterflies. And that's all I have. And there's a picture of the fact sheet. If there's any questions. Great. Any questions out there for Jan? How about Jan, can you talk about where would be a good place in a landscape for a butterfly garden? Sun or shade? Does that make a difference? Or should it be sheltered or not? Yeah, they like the sun primarily in sheltered locations. But if you're just putting in a garden, like I'm just putting in one on the south side, and I'm out in the open. So I planted some shrubs, but it's going to be a while before they're large enough. But yeah, it's hot and sunny because the butterflies need fairly warm temperatures to fly. They need like 80 degrees. So you'll often see them sunning themselves on plants and trees. And that's because they're trying to warm up their body body temperature high enough so they can fly. So do you ever put out like some dark rocks for them to bathe on? Yeah, they do like that. That's another thing that was mentioned in the fact sheet is they do like the sun. So you can put out objects for them to land on and sun. Do you ever give them like a muddy water or salt? Yeah, they do like mud because they do need minerals. So you can put out like a salt block that you typically use for livestock or just have an area that provides mud for them. But it's sometimes difficult to keep it wet. How about what does the woolly bear caterpillar produce? Oh, that's a moth. It's a R.T. in moth. It's called the Isabella tiger moth. So it's a beautiful moth actually. Do you believe that I can tell them to predict winters? Yeah, no, that's kind of a folklore. But it's an interesting one. I think the width of the band indicates the severity of the winter. They're brown and then they have the black band. So the white or the band, the worse, the more severe and colder are winter. Yeah, every winter is severe here. Yeah. It doesn't make a difference. How about the issue about, you know, Monarchs, they have to have milkweed, but milkweeds are noxious weed in some places. You can roll the one that is cultivated, the milkweed that was in the table. A showy one. Yeah, the showy one. And it's the orange flower and that's a cultivated species. That's not invasive. Right. And I can't remember the same thing. Yeah, tuberosa. It does, you know, good and medium to dry soil. So I have it in my garden and it's doing pretty good, but they're very slow to come up in the spring. So that's an ornamental milkweed. I think that showy milkweed is a purple flower, just like the common, just a little. Yeah, this is an orange flower. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so you can use the orange flowering milkweed. Yeah. That's not noxious. It's an orange flower. It's beautiful and will help to monitor. Yeah, the common milkweed is the one that's most invasive. The other ones like the swamp milkweed, that requires a wet area and it's not invasive at all if it's not, you know, a wet place. How about do any other butterflies have strategies to protect themselves with toxins besides the monarch? Well, they use that defensive. The caterpillar has that defensive mechanism where it birds the structure. It kind of looks like a snake's tongue and that's supposed to scare predators from eating the caterpillar. So it'd be interesting. I haven't seen it myself. So yeah, some of these caterpillars are a bit scary looking. Yeah, some of them have eye spots as well. Oh, another defensive mechanism on the wings is the eye spots. They're supposed to look like the eyes of a larger predator. There's a question about some good sheltered shrubs. Maybe you can just tell me which ones are you planting? Well, they do like the ones with flowers like lilac. The lilac tree, I'm trying to think. We didn't have too much on the trees, I don't think, in the publication. But any of the flowering trees would work. Nine bark? How about why do those white moths always find a cabbage? Why do they cabbage? What's so good about cabbage anyhow? Many of the, if you look at the list for the caterpillars, you'll find they're fairly whole specific and that's as their food source. So you know, they'll go to all the brockese plants in the garden like your broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts. They have amazing abilities to sense the cabbage. They do, yeah. They can pick up that. And they have, you know, they can smell, they have through their antenna or there's paths on the feet that they can sense. So I didn't know Monarchs eat with their feet. Yeah. Their front feet, I didn't know that one. And they use it for cleaning their eyes and antenna. Crazy. How about, do you have some tips on like annuals that produce the most nectar? Xenia is really good. You have to have an open flower. Yeah, open. I like verbenia. Oh, what's that other one? I really enjoyed it. I grew it last. Oh, they love that. Lantana. Oh, they love Lantana. Cosmoles are good. Some of the blanket flower. Yeah, you know, it's really good. Do I see Jan here? She's got lots of butterfly attracting flowers in that university publication. So, you know, shrubs. She had lalex, spireas, choked cherry, dogwoods, crannials, or flocks, or comb flower. This is in her slides too. She had a lot of this too. The butterfly weed we talked about. That's really an important one. Yeah, and that one's not invasive at all. That's the one that's not invasive. Fermenting fruit. Did I attract butterflies? Fermenting fruit? Well, just the group went with the morning clothes butterfly. Just that one group. So, you could put it out mid-summer, but in the spring they're more attracted to the sap that's flowing from some of the trees. Well, we don't recommend winding our trees. No. No matter how much you love butterflies. You don't want to throw a tree over it. One of the other things you can do is provide a box for butterflies to go in for shelter. They make these boxes with narrow holes in them. I have one, but I haven't seen any butterflies using it yet. So, I'm kind of waiting to see if it's something that's very useful for a garden. About, you ever saw those butterfly feeders that you can buy along with the bird feeders? Do they work those butterfly feeders or are they useful? They're still better having lots and lots of flowers with nectar. Coranantral. If you enjoy, like I really enjoy feeding the birds and I do tend to put out feeders for other animals too, like butterflies. McLean County says they've had butterflies use the boxes. It's worked in bad weather and wind. Any other questions about butterflies? So, when you were a little girl, did you have a butterfly collection? Yes, I actually held it, that's good. Is that right? That's ants, I liked. Oh, earlier chasing after butterflies and that's turning them up. Nowadays, you never know what some of the species are endangered, so. Can't do that. Yeah, you're better off using your camera. Taking pictures. It's more correct these days. Okay, there's no more questions. Let's thank you, Chan, for that really colorful and wonderful way to end the spring feeder forums. Just, I noticed there's a question about the variety trial program. Yes, it's ongoing this year. You can go to the North Dakota Home Garden variety trials and it's there. We just want to thank everybody for the forums and this is not the end. North Dakota State University, our Extension Service is there for you. We're there all summer. If you have any questions, feel free to contact your local county agent. And they are your best line of defense. They have the science-based answers that can help you. So, we hope to keep this partnership going all year round. With that, again, we encourage you to complete your evaluation forums and we wish you all a wonderful summer, everybody. Thank you.