Orange Sulphur Butterfly Gardens for North America’s Orange Sulphurs

Summary: North America’s orange sulphurs fly back and forth, into and over planned and wild orange sulphur butterfly gardens in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Orange sulphur butterflies include clovers among their favorite nectars: Jerry A. Payne, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images

Orange sulphurs are butterflies that are common throughout North America and that can be counted upon to frequent planned and wild orange sulphur butterfly gardens in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Orange sulphurs belong on lists of the most familiar butterflies throughout coastal North America because of the ever-expanding cultivation of alfalfa, the lepidopteran species’ favorite hostplant. Rick Cech and Guy Tudor, authors of Butterflies of the East Coast published in 2005 by Princeton University Press in New Jersey, correlate distribution with alfalfa. They describe status changes from rare strays to frequent fliers in Virginia around 1925, New York around 1930 and Maine in the 1940s because of alfalfa.

Butterfly watchers generally expect to see orange sulphurs among the first lepidopterans to arrive in early spring and among the last to leave in late fall.

Orange sulphur butterfly gardens in open, sunny coniferous woodlands, fields, meadows, pastures, roadsides and vacant lots favor orange sulphurs, whose adults perfect fast-paced, low-level flight patterns.

Flying low to the ground gives adults clearer, easier opportunities for courting and mating since ultraviolet reflective male forewings and ultraviolet non-reflective female forewings are species-specific. Female orange sulphurs have dark-bordered, showier, white-marked dorsal (upper-side) wing markings even though all adults have dark-bordered, dark-scaled basal hindwings to absorb heat during abdominal sun-basking. Thermoregulation is the reason why northern-dwelling orange sulphurs have dark-scaled basal markings and southern dwellers have early and late-season dark-form phenotypes sandwiching heat-tolerant, light-scaled mid-summer forms.

Dark-bordered, dark-scaled semi-white and white females join northerly seasonal phenotypes to divert nitrogen from yellowing pigment into growing fast and producing body fat and large eggs.

Orange sulphur butterfly gardens in Canada, Mexico and the United States keep orange sulphurs alive for 30- to 59-day life cycles within 200-kilometer (124.27-kilometer) flight ranges.

Orange sulphurs live 3 to 7 days as cream-colored, spindle-shaped eggs deposited singly on the underside and upper-sides of the leaves of alfalfas, clovers or legumes. Night-feeding green caterpillars with green dorsal lined tops and white lateral banded sides may take 14 to 28 days to experience five instars of body makeovers. They need 7 to 14 days as brown-marked, yellow lateral-lined, light green pupae whose pale green chrysalises become pink-tinted and yellow-green just before adult stages emerge.

Adults organize minimum 6- to 10-day life expectancies around courting, mud-puddling for nutrients and salts, mating, nectaring and sun-basking with wings closed upward and side-turned sunward.

Planned and wild orange sulphur butterfly gardens promise also to attract clouded sulphurs and silvery blues when white clovers and white sweet clovers respectively are flourishing.

Alfalfa, cow vetch, crown vetch, lupine, milk vetch, sweet peas, white clover and white sweet clover qualify as preferred hostplants for egg, larval and pupal stages. Orange sulphurs particularly relish legumes because many Fabaceae family members have nitrogen-fixing root nodules that solubilize insoluble nitrogen for nutrient intakes by soil food web members.

Adults sip nectar from asters, coneflowers, dandelions, goldenrods, henbit dead-nettles, horseweeds, milkweeds, peppermint, rosinweed, self-heal, sunflowers, tall blazing star, tall boneset, teasel, thistles and wild bergamot.

Legume-planted, nitrogen-fixated, wildflower-rich soils tend to support healthy ecosystems whose orange sulphurs attract dragonflies and songbirds that are not bad as far as natural enemies go.

Orange Sulphur (Colias eurytheme) is known as the alfalfa butterfly in recognition of the North American native lepidopteran's favorite hostplant, alfalfa (Medicago sativa); closeup of flowers, leaves and stems of alfalfa, Columbus, Stillwater County, south central Montana; June 25, 2007: USDA NRCS (NRCS Montana), Public Domain, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

orange sulphur butterfly: Jerry A. Payne, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images @ http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1226650

Orange Sulphur (Colias eurytheme) is known as the alfalfa butterfly in recognition of the North American native lepidopteran's favorite hostplant, alfalfa (Medicago sativa); closeup of flowers, leaves and stems of alfalfa, Columbus, Stillwater County, south central Montana; June 25, 2007: USDA NRCS (NRCS Montana), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/160831427@N06/27104519909/

For further information:

Marriner, Derdriu. "Chives (Allium schoenoprasum): Bon Appétit! for Azure, Blue, Marblewing, and Sulphur Butterflies." Wizzley > Plants & Gardening > Plants > Herb Plants.
Available @ https://wizzley.com/chives-allium-schoenoprasum/

Marriner, Derdriu. 9 June 2015. "Colias eurytheme: Black Framed Orange Yellow of Orange Sulphur Butterfly." Earth and Space News. Tuesday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2015/06/colias-eurytheme-black-framed-orange.html

Marriner, Derdriu. "Marigolds (Tagetes): Flavorous, Floriferous, and Fragrant to Skipper, Sulphur, and White Butterflies." Wizzley > Plants & Gardening > Plants > Garden Plants.
Available @ https://wizzley.com/marigolds-genus-tagetes/