What Types of Flowers Attract Butterflies?

Attract butterflies to your garden.butterflies image by Maciej Zatonski from Fotolia.com

Gardens filled with flowers add interest, color and fragrance to a landscape. The flowers are attractive. However, you can add another colorful, decorative element to your garden that is living -- butterflies. Plant flowers that have high amounts of nectar, and you will have a garden that is aflutter with butterflies.

Butterfly Bush

Though most commonly known as butterfly bush, the Latin name for this plant is Buddleia. These tubular flowers grow on woody-stemmed bushes that grow up to 6 feet tall. The spiky flowers can grow from 3 to 10 inches long. They are fragrant and have a high quantity of nectar. There are about 100 species of these bushes, both deciduous and evergreen. Several colors of the bush are available, such as blue, red, pink, purple, yellow and white. Species of butterfly that are attracted to the butterfly bush include coma, giant swallowtail, monarch and mourning cloak.

Aster is a member of the Compositae family. The name "aster" means star in Greek and the plant was given the name because of its star-shaped flowers. The flower is common in North America, with some 175 species that grow on the continent, and it also grows in Europe, Asia and South America. The blooms of the aster grow around a yellow center and typically reach from 1/2 inch to 2 inches in diameter. They come in a variety of colors, including yellow, white, purple and pink. They are a perennial flower that grow best in full sunlight and well-drained soil. These flowers attract American snout, American painted lady, common checkered skipper, question mark and sleepy orange butterflies.

These annual flowers are part of the Asteraceae family. A single flower grows on a long, green stalk. Flowers are circular in shape and feature either one row of petals to a dome shape with several petals piled on top of one another. They are known for their brilliant, eye-catching colors, including red, orange, hot pink, yellow and chartreuse. Though they are native to Mexico and the American Southwest, they do well in all warm climates. Zinnias attract cloudless sulphur, painted lady, silvery checkerspot and little glassywing butterflies.