Came across a magazine article about attracting birds, bees & butterflies via certain color flowers. This is a good time of the year to be planning for this sort of thing.
White or pale colors tend to attract night-flying moths and in some areas bats. Don't know anything about the night-flying moths, but I'm not too excited about attracting the bats. I know they eat a tremendous amount of insects, but . . . A few years ago I had bats in the house, several times . . . and I don't mean in the attic. One night I had three. I checked and sealed every crack I could find. Only thing I could come up with was down the chimney and through the furnace. I'm gonna go real light with the white flowers. If you are still interested in the white ones, the article suggested moonflowers, angel's trumpets, white or pale petunias and evening primrose.
Use yellow to attract butterflies. Sunflowers, black-eyed susans, gaillardias, marigolds and golden alyssum are suggested. I have plenty of black-eye susans and gaillardias. I almost always plant sunflowers, but I seldom get a good crop.
Purple is another color that attracts butterflies. The article recommends butterfly bush, purple coneflower, verbenas, perovskia, petunias, lavender, anise hyssop, asters, rhododendrons and azaleas. I have a couple butterfly bushes, plenty of purple coneflowers, a few asters an some years petunias. I like the wave petunias. The never stop bloomin and you don't need to dead head them.
Red and orange flowers are the favorites of hummingbirds. That is the reason hummingbird feeders are red. Scarlet honey suckle, bee balm, columbines, canna, gladioulas, lilies, salvias, trumpet vine octillio and azaelas are mentioned. I have bee balm, several colors of day lilies, and gladioulus. I almost always plant some salvias every year.
I didn't know that bees like a particular color. According to the article, blue is their color. Crocus, hyacinth, grape hyacinth, salvias, anise hyssop, blue spirea and campanulas are the recommendations. I like crocuses and planted quite a few bulbs last fall. I've tried the hyacinth, but they don't make my top 50 list. Blue salvias haven't done well for me. In general I really don't think they perform as well as the red salvias.
For reasons unknown to me, the article goes on to recommend dull red or red-brown flowers to attract flies. Why anyone would want to attract flies to their yard is beyond me . . . If anyone has any ideas, please get back to me . . . Anyway, if you want to try attracting flies, they suggest Dutchman's pipe vine, trilliums, pawpaw trees and maybe skunk cabbage. They the mention the world's largest flower, rafflesia arnoldii, but the strong fragrance it emits just plain stinks. You might not want to seriously consider that one.
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