For a few minutes this past July, I thought my garden had attracted a rare Karner blue butterfly. Its outside wings were an ethereal pale blue, flecked with dark spots, and it was gobbling up my culver’s root, so intent on its task that it wasn’t the slightest bit flustered as I scrutinized it a mere six inches away. Culver’s root, a native prairie plant, attracts bees by the dozens every summer; why not a Karner blue?
But as we surely know by now, when something appears too good to be true,
it usually is. Once indoors, I pulled up the photos that our contributor Jean Starr had sent to illustrate her regional report about efforts in northern Indiana to establish oak savanna habitat, which included planting blue lupines (Lupinus perennis) to attract the Karner blues. (July/August, page 11) Alas, my mystery butterfly was no Karner blue.
After checking a few books I decided my visitor was probably a spring azure. The following day I saw it alight on a ‘Nanho Blue’ butterfly bush (Buddleia), a plant that had also been attracting swallowtails, admirals, and monarchs. The monarchs then discovered the swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) that was coming into bloom, and pretty soon they were feasting on the Joe-Pye weeds and the Liatris ligulistylis, which made them really, really happy.
I’ve blathered about this before, but it bears repeating that it’s critically important to maintain biodiversity, and to do that we need to provide habitat for the creatures of our own given areas-—birds, butterflies, bugs. (According to University of Maine Extension, 97 percent of insects are beneficial). And the key to maintaining habitat is growing as many native plants as we can. Woodland plants. Prairie plants. Whatever is feasible on our own little plot.
Fall is upon us—a primo time for getting out and looking at native plants in the prairie. In this issue we have two stories that feature prairie natives.
Our cover story lauds the fall prairie in all its glory, its purples and golds vying for attention, its seed heads ripening and its grasses shifting colors after they’ve been nipped by frost. This region is blessed with several opportunities to see prairies up close, including the Chicago Botanic Garden, The Morton Arboretum, Cantigny Gardens in Illinois, plus Fernwood Botanical Garden & Nature Preserve in Niles, MI and the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison, WI—all of which have restored prairies. To visit a prairie on land that was never cultivated, go to Wolf Road Prairie in Westchester (www.savetheprairiesociety.org) and the Indian Boundary Prairies in Markham, IL (www.ibprairies.org).
Prairie plants “work” stylistically with the architecture of many houses, but they make particularly fine partners for contemporary houses, as shown by our other natives-based story. Here we visit the garden of Ed and Anne Burke, designed by Know Maintenance™ guru Roy Diblik, located chock-a-block near the CTA’s Orange Line. The garden also features two roof gardens and is way cool.
Whether located in the city, the country or the suburbs, our gardens need to include as many native plants as we can reasonably grow. If we do everything right, maybe one day there will even be Karner blue butterflies in the city.
Carolyn Ulrich
Editor
