Athena Rayne Anderson

This post is based on one that was originally published on May 18, 2011, on my blog “Pollinators Info” (no longer online).

The butterfly pollination syndrome includes flowers that open in daylight (diurnal) and have a place for the insect to land while it probes the flower for nectar. Butterflies are not good at hovering, unlike most moth pollinators, so a landing space or something to hang onto is important for them. In compound flower heads, like sunflowers and the thistle in the featured image, the animal just walks around all over the flower. Many butterfly-pollinated flowers have corolla tubes or nectar spurs that keep nectar out of reach of animals that don’t have a long tongue to reach it. Phlox is one great example.

Butterflies don’t seem to have preferences for flower size. I’ve seen them feeding from tiny sotol flowers and lillies the size of my hand. Anecdotally, smaller flowers seem to be more common choices. Butterflies are known to be important pollinators for plants with a range of flower colors, so that characteristic isn’t especially helpful for predicting visitation. Reports about scent preferences in butterflies are conflicting; some sources say they prefer a sweet scent, while others say they prefer no scent at all.