NZ butterfly plants: mid-summer flowers

January 2026

What flowers have been feeding the butterflies through January?

Verbena 'Vanity'

A monarch butterfly and a bumblebee on Verbena 'Vanity'

Of the plants I blogged about for early summer, the verbena Vanity is still going strong and is the second most popular flower for monarch butterflies in my garden. I think the height and structure of multiple flower heads are important factors and the great thing is it doesn't take up a lot of space. It would be beautiful in a pot on a sunny balcony.

3 February update: I found a red admiral, newly released from the caterpillar castle, on this plant. I waited to see what else it fed from, but it simply didn't leave the verbena. Flowering for two months so far and attracting monarchs, cabbage whites and admirals, I will definitely be growing this plant again.

Tropical milkweed Asclepias curassavica

A monarch butterfly on tropical milkweed flowers

Native to Mexico, this is by far the most popular flower in the garden with monarch butterflies with its hot orange, red and yellow flowers. At the old house I rotated these in pots so there would always be flowering milkweed on the deck so the monarchs would fly around us. This plant is not as tall as swan plants - about 70cm -1m - and definitely looks more attractive, but doesn't provide the same amount of food for hungry monarch caterpillars. This is a definite for northern New Zealand butterfly gardens. The cooler areas of Aotearoa can grow swamp milkweed Asclepias incarnata  instead, which has lovely pink flowers. I'm jealous because it's simply too humid in Auckland for A. incarnata and all my attempts to grow it have failed.

Buddleja / buddleia

A cabbage white butterfly on an unknown dark purple buddleia

I have a lot of buddleia plants in the garden, but they are still quite low. I imagine they will get more popular as they get taller, but they have certainly been attracting the butterflies. They are not called butterfly bushes for nothing. This is the second flush of flowers - they have not been continuous, at least not yet - and I finally have an idea what colours I have from random cuttings I brought home. One of them is definitely Buddleia ‘Lochinch’, which is a cross between Buddleja davidii and Buddleja fallowiana and is a mid-purple colour. My favourite is a deep purple colour, name unknown, and the butterflies' favourite is a light lilac colour.

"Weeds"

Swan Plants: For the monarchs the swan plant flowers are proving attractive, but this is a distant third place in terms of preference. With them its all about the tropical milkweed. The monarchs lay eggs on both swan plants and tropical milkweed with the former being more popular, probably because there are more leaves to feed the larvae.

White clover: The blues have enjoyed the white clover flowers and of course, its a good food source for its caterpillars. The birds foot trefoils have gone over, so clover is now the top weed flower. It's a good job I let it grow in the borders, because hubby has been keeping the grass short.

A long-tailed blue butterfly on a white clover flower

Nettles: Whilst I haven't seen any admirals in the flower garden, despite me releasing a couple of dozen, a yellow admiral did come in a couple of times late in January to lay eggs on my non-existent European nettles (the captive red admiral caterpillars ate them all). Caterpillar food plants are another way of attracting the butterflies in. You have to have the stomach to grow weeds though.

Honourable mentions

Traiing Lantana lantana montevidensis

The cabbage white butterflies have been enjoying these.

Cosmos

The monarchs are feeding on cosmos occasionally and seem to prefer the dark orange red short variant, rather than the light pink or bright orange varieties.

A monarch butterfly on a short cosmos variety with orange-red petals

It doesn't matter that most of the flowers in the garden are not attracting the butterflies because the bees are on 99% of the flowers I planted. This means nothing is going to waste and that I've made a good, varied pollinator garden. The monarch butterflies are definitely fussy and whilst they do check out a number of flowers, they come back to the same plants again and again. This is great news if you are a monarch lover and only have space for a limited range of plants. With the monarchs now firmly established in my butterfly garden and claiming it for their own, they are chasing off the birds, let alone other butterflies, so you'll need to look back at last year's blog post for the blues' favourite flowers.