Learning to love white butterflies

Or at least appreciating the cabbage white

January 2025

My butterfly garden is like one of those western movies where there's no sign of life, bar the tumbleweed crossing the wide shot to underline its emptiness.

Actually, that's not true. The flowers are out: Beautiful echinaceas, purple-flowered buddleias, strawflowers, trailling lantanas and even a few hebe flowers. The bees are out too: introduced honey bees and bumblebees, here in NZ because of their agricultural benefit, enjoying all the nectar of the flowers along with the hoverflies. There are just no butterflies.

That's not true either. There are no native butterflies. What I do have coming into the garden, though mostly passing through, are cabbage white butterflies, Pieris rapae.

Two cabbage white butterflies dancing around each other, October 2024

I believe the saying goes, if you are not with the one you love, love the one you're with. I can't say that I love cabbage whites, but my indifference is definitely wavering.

At the old house with its many monarch butterflies, I simply ignored the cabbage whites. They've been here since 1930 and I certainly haven't, so live and let live. I didn't want to kill them, but I didn't want to help them either. They went their way and I went mine.

Now, as the only butterflies around, I find myself looking forward to seeing them. They are easy to spot, both because of their flight pattern and their colouring, and they journey across my garden every day. They don't often stop, although they have checked out the butterfly garden and are not impressed.

However, a few days ago, I found a mating pair in the garden.

Oo la la!

It says to me that on some level, this is a safe space. We are trying to control wasps, as nuts as it is with so many. We are trapping. We are removing the non-native praying mantis. Apparently, whilst this species is the same colouring as the large white, Pieris brassicae, they are palatable to birds, unlike their larger cousins. In the UK their main urban predators are the house sparrow (introduced in NZ and here in the garden), goldfinch (also introduced and in next door's garden) and skylark (introduced, but singing in someone else's sky). I wouldn't be sad if the cabbage whites ended up in the food chain this way, because we are all about our birds in Aotearoa.

Speaking of the cabbage white's cousins, the large white butterflies, these did make it to New Zealand in 2010. There was no safe space for them. A huge crop pest and, by the way, devourer of our native cresses, most of which are endangered, they were targeted by a $3M eradication project. Incredibly, the Department of Conservation offered children $10 per dead great white butterfly during the 2013 spring school holidays, resulting in 134 captures, whilst their staff took out 3,000 in various life stages. By the end of 2014 the butterfly had been eradicated. New Zealand is the first country to have succeeded in eliminating an invasive butterfly species. The other pest species in this country are more entrenched, but we can keep plugging away.

I can tell you a white butterfly I'd really enjoy making it to Auckland - the Honshu white butterfly. I mentioned it when I talked about weeds. At the time the large white was getting kicked out, the Honshu white was being brought in. The reason? To tackle Japanese honeysuckle that is threatening our forests. Like the bumble bees, it may be a deliberately introduced species, but it contributes positively to the environment. They haven't taken off (pardon the pun) very well and out of the many release sites, it only established in a couple, but it is spreading out now it's got going. It may reach the southern most part of the Auckland region in the next year or two, but how long it will take to make its way up to the North Shore is anyone's guess. We butterfly lovers can hope. I have Japanese honeysuckle in the bush parts of the garden and I'd love a butterfly to do the heavy lifting to get rid of it.

In the meantime, whilst I'm waiting for other butterflies to arrive, I get to enjoy the cabbage whites and learn to appreciate them that little bit more.