Butterfly Food Plant List for Portland, Oregon, Willamette Valley, and the Columbia Gorge

Do you want to create an inviting garden environment for butterflies?  Are you interested in reversing the precipitous decline of butterflies in urban areas?  You've come to the right place.  

This list is divided into plants for each butterfly species, plants considered weeds but still valuable food for butterflies, and some can’t-miss species that should be in every butterfly garden.  Some general hints follow.  One thing to bear in mind is that if you have an area with a well-established population of any of the food or nectar plants on this list, it’s best to try to preserve that place intact since butterflies likely already use the plants for habitat.  This list includes butterfly and plant species common around Portland, if you are in a different area you may be able to find a local list by using an Internet search engine and typing "butterfly food plant list" along with your city, state, or county name as the search criteria.  

As you scan the list below, you'll likely notice that few of the plants on it appear in urban landscapes.  It's mostly our own doing that butterflies have vanished from cities.  Simply planting more of the right plants will go a long way toward bringing butterflies back.  Another idea that hasn't been scientifically proven, but seems logical, is that growing food plants in an irrigated area will extend their growing season and provide more opportunity for butterflies to feed.  You don't have to water most wild plants to grow them successfully, but during dry years a little water might help butterflies survive where they might not otherwise.  

Tips for Starting a Butterfly Garden

Can’t-Miss Plants

If you plant these in your garden, there will be at least some butterflies frequenting the flowers without too much work on your part: 
Asters (especially perennial varieties), dogbane, mock orange, yarrow, phlox, hawksbeard, ceanothus, pearly everlasting, and cosmos

"Weeds" You Should Keep

These plants are considered weeds, but are valuable food or nectar plants.  If possible, keep them in your yard, even if it’s a small patch:   
Stinging nettle, dandelion, goldenrod, thistle (noninvasive species), wild rose, mint, vetch, clover, buckwheat, desert parsley, and Oregon grape.  Pacific madrone trees (Arbutus) are under-represented in urban areas, and are a food plant for the spring azure.  They are good to plant as long as you select an area where the tree's root crown will not be disturbed.  

Hint for mint:  If you don’t like mint’s habit of spreading underground, confine it to a container. 

Please avoid butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii), as it’s an invasive plant. 

Plant Information for Specific Butterfly Species

Notes:  

1.  When choosing between multiple species for a particular butterfly's food or nectar plant, choose plants that are native to our region first.  *Non-native species are marked with an asterisk.  

2.  For hawksbeards, Crepis capillaris is a non-native plant, but C. acuminata, C. atribarba, C. modocensis, C. occidentalis, and C. runcinata are natives.  

3.  Lathyrus latifolius (perennial pea, everlasting pea) is non-native and should be avoided even though it's offered at many nursery seed racks.  L. nevadensis, L. polyphyllus, and L. pauciflorus are natives.  

4.  Vicia sativa and V. villosa are non-natives.  Vicia gigantea and V. americana are natives.  

5.  There are some very nasty invasive thistles.  Only Cirsium callilepis (mountain thistle), C. remotifolium (weak thistle), and C. undulatum (wavy-leaf thistle) should be planted.  Canada thistle (C. arvense) is considered invasive.  

References: 

Pyle, Robert Michael.  The Butterflies of Cascadia.  Seattle:  Seattle Audubon Society, 2002. 

Scott, James A.  The Butterflies of North America.  Stanford, California:  The Stanford University Press, 1986.