Nectar Plants for Mississippi Butterflies

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There’s nothing as magical and whimsical as a garden filled with colorful butterflies. They’re fun to watch, but they also play an important role in our environment. Butterflies are pollinators, meaning they help fertilize plants so the plants can reproduce. 

Mississippi is home to several different types of butterflies. Three of the most common ones found in the state are monarch butterflies, black swallowtails, and pipevine swallowtails. To attract them and a host of other butterfly species to your yard, you will need to provide them with certain plants to feed on. 

Having some of these nectar plants in your yard helps provide a food source for adult butterflies:

  • Angel’s Trumpet
  • Bee Balm 
  • Black-Eyed-Susan 
  • Butterfly Bush 
  • Cardinal Flower 
  • Cleome 
  • Common Mallow 
  • Coneflower 
  • Coreopsis 
  • Cosmos 
  • Dame’s Rocket 
  • Dogwood 
  • Frikart Aster 
  • Garden Phlox 
  • Gayfeathers 
  • Glossy Abelia 
  • Goldenrod 
  • Gomphrena 
  • Hardy Ageratum 
  • Hibiscus 
  • Hollyhock 
  • Hollyhock Mallow 
  • Joe-Pye Weed 
  • Lantana 
  • Milkweed 
  • Musk Mallow 
  • Ox-Eye Daisy 
  • Passion Flower 
  • Pentas 
  • Queen-Anne’s-Lace 
  • Sages 
  • Shasta Daisies 
  • Showy Sedum 
  • Spicebush 
  • Swamp Sunflower 
  • Sweet William 
  • Verbena 
  • Willow 
  • Yarrows
  • Zinnia

These are great food sources for adult butterflies, but you’ll need a few other types of plants to have a well-rounded garden for butterflies. Adult butterflies also need certain plants to lay eggs on. Once hatched, the caterpillars will feed on those plants until they transform into butterflies. You can get the full list of larval plants on our previous blog post.  There are some plants that are useful for both adult butterflies and butterfly caterpillars, like dogwood, hollyhock, milkweed, Queen-Anne’s-Lace, verbena, and willow. 

Learn more about creating welcoming environments for pollinators by checking out Extension Publication 2402, “Establishing a Backyard Wildlife Habitat.” 

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