Published in the McAllen Monitor, October 5, 2024.
Story and photos by Anita Westervelt, Texas Master Naturalist
If it is blooming, I bet there are butterflies on it. October is the heaviest butterfly month in the Rio Grande Valley. This year they seem particularly abundant and hungry. The summer started with hardly a butterfly sighting; then the rains came, plants and shrubs were revitalized. By mid-September flowering plants began drawing in a kaleidoscope of colorful butterflies.
October generally coincides with the flowering of one of the more excellent nectar-producing plants for attracting the most butterflies: Crucita, Chromolaena odorata, also called fall-blooming mistflower or blue mistflower, with its lavender flowers.
Crucita can grow to heights of four feet or taller and will eventually sprawl. It is often uprooted after the blooms die because it easily and abundantly self-propagates, and you can be assured of plants for next year. Crucita grows in full sun with minimal water needs. It transplants easily and successfully, which will make you popular when you share it with your friends come spring when those wind dispersed seeds begin making an appearance.
A popular coastal mistflower, Padre Island mistflower, Conoclinium betonicifolium, also called betony leaf mistflower, has oblong, succulent leaves with toothed margins. The plant blooms summer and fall with lavender flowers and can take the wind and salt spray at the beach. It also does well inland.
A third mistflower popular in the Rio Grande Valley is palmleaf mistflower, Conoclinium dissectum. Also called Gregg’s mistflower, it is native to northern Mexico and Arizona, Texas and New Mexico in the United States. It is a perennial, can grow to two feet tall in compact mounds of dense foliage; leaves are fan-shaped, and delicate seeming, but sturdy. It spreads easily by roots. Blooms are light blue to lavender with peak bloom time in early fall. It can grow in partial shade. It may require more water than C. odorata.
Mistflowers are the top of the list for maintenance free, easy to establish excellent nectar plants to attract hungry butterflies.
I don’t generally tout nonnative plants because native plants, like the mist flowers, might be your first choice but for the month of October, go with what’s blooming at a local nursery. It’s not too late to bring home flowering plants to draw in many of the butterflies passing through.
Blues, purples, lavenders, reds and oranges are good choices. Nonnative plants like purple porterweed, Stachytarpheta frantziior, and red porterweed, S. mutabilis, are excellent nectar choices. They are prolific bloomers, have shrublike growth to about three feet tall. Porterweeds are native to Mexico and other subtropical regions of the Americas. In the Rio Grande Valley, they will die at the first sign of a cold wind and likely not self-propagate.
Brazilian bachelor’s button, Centratherum punctatum, is another nonnative plant as a good nectar source for butterflies. It is low growing to about 12 inches high with a sprawling spread and produces multiple lavender blooms. It is native to most of South America.
Check out the following link for a list of local native plant growers and nurseries that stock native plants. Call for location and times. https://www.stbctmn.org/post/valley-native-plant-growers-nurseries
October is also the annual Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s annual Texas Pollinator BioBlitz, October 11 – 27. Check out the link, get involved as a citizen scientist, develop a new hobby or a personal challenge: https://tpwd.texas.gov/education/bioblitz/?pk_vid=5c44e498c4182390172735911842fb70\
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