(April 2006) from horticulturist Nevin Smith. Nevin has spent his life growing plants and exploring the wild California landscape and he shares his years of experience growing native California plants in this lively, informative book.
Wildscaping
Welcome to Wildscaping, a site dedicated to helping fellow gardeners in Southern California learn how to attract and nurture wildlife in their own yards.
If you missed our handouts from a recent presentation, you can download the plant list as a PDF here.
“Out of the Wild & Into the Garden” Symposium: Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, April 16–19 2008: We will be giving a presentation on Gardening for Butterflies at the upcoming “Out of the Wild” Symposium. This is a must-see event for avid CA native plant enthusiasts!
Birdy News
The birds are slowly returning after being scared out of their wits by a resident Merlin (small falcon). Some winters the Merlin will stay all winter, and it's like someone turned down the volume in the garden! Hopefully he's moved on, and we can get back to our regular programming...
March 08: Lovely to see Mourning Cloak butterflies greeting the warmer days with a good flutter. The song sparrows are already gathering nesting material and are singing their little hearts out to impress potential mates; we believe there are three different songsters which bodes well for another good year for youngsters. Baby birds were everywhere last summer; a baby wrentit made friends with its reflection in a window (and greeted himself at ungodly hours of the morning for weeks on end...). The California Trashers were heard along the fence where the ‘Roger’s Red’ grape is in fruit, but were otherwise fairl shy. The regular May migration brought some welcome Western Tanagers and warblers passing through; in June we saw a Bullock’s Oriole and a Red Bishop (a bright red African bird, likely an escapee). And in the fall, we welcomed back warblers, juncos and white-crowned sparrows. !
Monarchs
We released well over 100 monarchs in early 2007, but for the first time since we planted milkweed, we didn’t get our usual monarch migration in August–October. Friends all over LA were seeing monarchs (and being eaten out of house and home), but the flying jewels ignored our plants. Maybe they sensed we were so incredibly busy this summer/fall that we didn’t really have time to be cleaning out cages (or updating our website - sorry about that!). Finally we traded some plants for caterpillars in November, and are still releasing the adults (as weather permits) in early December. For more on raising monarchs, check out our Monarch Life Cycle page.
Overall, butterflies have been thin on the ground in 2007 due to the dry winter/spring; we mainly saw our regular Pale Swallowtails, Western Swallowtails, and Mourning Cloaks. However, despite 2006 being a banner year for American Painted Ladies (nesting in host plant Gnaphalium canescens), we saw no sign of these lovely ladies all year, despite some lovely host plants.
By the way, our Tithonia (Mexican Sunflower) annuals were superb again this year, reminding us that it really doesn't matter what else is blooming, 10 out of 10 larger butterflies prefer Tithonia! Tithonia is a guaranteed butterfly magnet, so we always plant some seeds around May 1st, and (usually) have 3 ft plants blooming by August, and they bloom through November. Hummingbirds also enjoy the flowers, and the seeds are eaten by goldfinches. Picturered here is a Pale Swallowtail enjoying Tithonia.
Seeing Blue
Last summer the garden was again awash in Marine Blue butterflies whirling around their food plant, Baja Fairy Duster (Calliandra californica), which is also a big hit with the hummingbirds and orioles. There are possibly also some Ceraunus Blue, which is not unlike the Marine Blue.
And yes, it is hard to focus on the markings of a one-inch butterfly that never sits still, but you'd be surprised how easy they are to photograph while ovipositing (laying eggs) as the females are soooo focused! Witness this Acmon Blue (right) laying eggs on Red Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens); she also used the cream flowers of the Sea Cliff Buckwheat (Eriogonum parvifolium). Notice how her abdomen curls down to deposit the egg, while her antennae point down as if to say “I’m really concentrating here!”. The caterpillars feed on the flowers, but we've yet to find any as they are so tiny.
Fatal Attraction
It's also not unusual to see little brown skippers nectaring in all corners of the garden, so many in fact that we often fail to really look at a small brown butterfly flitting around. But this little fella (right) caught our eye: The Fatal Metalmark (Calephelis nemesis) is a small butterfly, only 3/4" to 1" in size, found in coastal sage scrub and chaparral, usually along canyon bottoms. We have no record of them visiting us before, so we hope he sticks around. Click here for a view from above. Their food plant include Bush Sunflower (Encelia californica), which we have in the garden, and Mule Fat (Baccharis salicifolia), usually found in wetland areas.
More photos to come soon; been busy with real work!
Upcoming Events
As we mentioned above, check our Events page for more places to catch our Wildscaping talks scheduled so far. Note that we have two different talks: our general talk on Wildscaping Your Garden (for birds, hummingbirds and butterflies) as well as the more specific talk on Wildscaping for Butterflies. If you missed our handouts from a recent presentation, you can download the plant list as a PDF here.
We also include a list of Other Events from organizations covering native plants, birds and butterflies.
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