Wildflowers to attract
butterflies are always in demand by wildlife-friendly
gardeners and this month’s selection fit the bill very well
indeed. The ‘scabious’ flowers that many of us grow in our
gardens – whether wild or cultivated varieties – are renowned
for their ability to bring many types of insect, and
butterflies in particular, to borders and meadows. Like the
daisy family they have many small, colourful flowers or
florets with plenty of nectar and pollen clustered on tall
stems, offering a platform for passing insects to alight
upon. They are easy to grow, long lived and flower well into
the late summer. In all they are excellent wildflowers for
the garden.
Perhaps the best known
of this group is the teasel. The scabious flowers are members
of the family Dipsacaceae and the wild teasel’s Latin
name, Dipsacus fullonum, reflects its place amongst the mauve
scabious flowers that we are more familiar with. This plant
is rather different from its cousins, having quite bristly
leaves and stems, but its ability to attract bumblebees and
butterflies makes it a wonderful plant to include in the
garden where you have space. It can reach two metres or more
in height so if you plant it in your garden make sure you
position it at the back of a border or in a wild spot. It is
happy in light shade as well as full sun and being a biennial
it will sow its seeds around with abandon. These will
germinate in the autumn producing attractive rosettes to
provide interest through the winter months. Seeds sown in the
spring in pots or where they are to flower will also germinate
with ease.
Teasel heads are
wonderfully unusual. The tiny pinky-mauve flowers open in a
ring around the flower head, beginning at the tip and slowly
opening downwards over time, so the whole flower head is never
open all at once. This has the advantage of providing nectar
over a long period. Hoverflies, bumblebees and peacock
butterflies especially love this plant, but its usefulness to
the wildlife gardener isn’t over when all the flowers have
gone. The seeds are adored by goldfinches - they will
actively seek out teasels and extract every last seed from the
spiky head through the autumn and winter months.
Teasels heads were
used in the past for ‘teasing’ cloth – evenly raising the nap
with their small hooked spines. More often it was the variety
known as fuller’s teasel that was employed – a subspecies from
southern Europe which is smaller than our native and has
curved tips to the spines. This plant can still be seen in
the wild especially in areas such as the Cotswolds where wool
production was once an important industry.
For some gardens the
teasel is a rather too exuberant plant, but the field scabious
(Knautia arvensis), with its haze of mauve pincushions
throughout the summer months, is a plant that every garden
should have. Flowering begins in mid summer and continues
into September or later. The early flowers are quite large,
as much as four centimetres across, but as the summer
progresses they become smaller and smaller. This species will
grow to a metre or so, its branched flowering stems bearing large numbers of flower heads, each of which then
produces a pretty faceted seed head. Butterflies of many
species love the field scabious but the small tortoiseshell in
particular will find it. Like the teasel it germinates well
from seed although it is a little erratic. It is best to sow
in spring or autumn in large seed trays and remove the
seedlings as they germinate, moving them into pots or plugs.
Small plants will continue to appear in the seed tray for
several months so don’t despair if you only get a few at
first. Once grown on a little, seedlings can be planted into
a meadow or the middle of a mixed border. One of the joys of
this plant is that its robust nature means that it can hold
its own in rough grass, even couch, alongside a hedge or under
fruit trees in any soil type. This has to be one of my
favourite wildflowers for its wildlife attracting ability, its
tenacity and its gentle beauty. No garden should be without
it.
Small scabious (Scabiosa
columbaria) is quite a different plant from the field
scabious. It is smaller in height (about 30 - 40 cms in
flower) and more compact, making it ideal for a container, a
small border or a gravel garden, although it can seed rather
well and may become a nuisance in the latter. Having said
that it would be difficult to have too much of it! It has
masses of beautiful pale mauve flowers and small tortoiseshell
butterflies love it. It prefers full sun and a drier, more
free draining soil than the field scabious, coming as it does
from wild, chalky habitats, but is pretty adaptable in the
garden. Avoid it in any soil that might become waterlogged
where the devil’s-bit scabious should be your plant of
choice. Small scabious seeds can be sown in the spring in
pots or trays and they germinate easily. Again prick them out
as they appear, keeping your seed tray safe for the
latecomers.
If you have a clay
soil, a pond or a bog garden, the purple pincushions of
devil’s-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) are a must. This
plant will grow in grass on a damp pond edge, in a meadow on
clay soil or it will thrive in a bog garden. It has gorgeous
dark, purple-blue flowers on tall stems and these appear late
in the summer, sometimes into October. This is another
excellent insect attractant with both pollen and nectar for
bumblebees and butterflies. Its late flowering period makes
it especially useful for insects in the autumn preparing for
hibernation. Unlike the other species, this wildflower is not
terribly easy to grow from seed. Its germination is slow and
the best way to coax it into growth is to ensure that the
compost is saturated at all times. This reproduces the
conditions in which this plant grows in the wild. Obtain seed
from a reputable grower, sow on the surface of the compost,
cover the seed only lightly and stand the pot in a plant
saucer which is kept filled with water at all times.
Although our own
native scabious flowers make brilliant garden plants, there
are other ornamental non-native varieties that are worthy of a place in a
wildlife-friendly garden. Shining scabious (Scabiosa lucida)
is a European wildflower with pink-mauve flowers and for a
completely different shade you could try yellow scabious,
Scabiosa ochroleuca, which is excellent for butterflies.
Scabiosa rummelica (otherwise known as Knautia macedonica) is
dark crimson and there are many gorgeous coloured annual
varieties of sweet scabious, Scabiosa atropurpurea. If you
are prepared to go a bit wild, you could try Cephalaria
gigantea which can reach 2 metres or more and will produce
large creamy yellow scabious flowers which bring the
bumblebees in droves.
These flowers, whether
native or not, are excellent butterfly and bumblebee
attractants. Whether for the front or back of the border, in
a wild spot, a pond edge or meadow, a scabious will always add
plenty of colour and masses of wildlife interest. |
