Conservation Corner - Bill's Butterflies

Hillsborough County's ELAPP Nature Preserves are a paradise for butterfly enthusiasts, and no one knows better than Bill Carlisle. Bill is the Prescribed Burn Coordinator for Hillsborough County’s department of Conservation and Environmental Lands Management. A lifelong Riverview resident, he has a great sense of humor, and possesses the roughly hewn countenance that one can only acquire from decades of wildland firefighting and environmental lands management.

What else comes with that experience? In Bill's case, a multitude of excellent animal and plant pictures! In this article, I am going to cover several of the butterfly species he's documented in our Nature Preserves, as well as some of the host plants you can include in your garden to help support these incredible animals! Remember, a host plant is a plant that a specific butterfly species lays its eggs on and the caterpillars feed on.

Long Tailed Skipper (Urbanus proteus)

A Long Tailed Skipper butterfly, with a blue body accented with swept, white and brown spotted wings and long tails, clings to a green leaf.

Skipper butterflies are often mistaken for moths due to their stout bodies and swept wings. The Long Tailed Skipper is a beautiful example of these unique butterflies. Host plants include legumes such as beans and peas. A great native host plant is the American Wisteria (Wisteria frutescens) vine.

Palamedes Swallowtail (Papilio palamedes)

A Palamedes Swallowtail butterfly with black wings featuring yellow stripes and blue and orange spots feeds on lilac-colored flowers with a green leafy background.

A Palamedes nectaring on a native blazing star plant.

This striking black and yellow butterfly is a treat to see in the wild. The Palamedes Swallowtail relies on Red bay (Persea borbonia) and swamp bay (Persea palustris), as host plants for its caterpillars.

Checkered White (Pontia protodice)

A Checkered White butterfly with white wings patterned with small black dots rests on a yellow wildflower against a backdrop of green foliage.

The Checkered White is another butterfly that is easily mistaken for a moth due to its plain white wings with black markings. However, this species is a true butterfly! It uses plants in the mustard family, like the native Virginia Pepperweed (Lepidium virginicum), as hosts.

Monarch (Danaus plexippus)

Two Monarch butterflies, recognizable by thier orange wings laced with black veins and bordered with white dots, rests mirroring each-other like a yin and yang on a green leafy background.

Perhaps one of the most well-known and beloved butterflies, the Monarch is famous for its incredible migrations. Monarchs exclusively use Milkweed species as host plants. Native milkweed plants, such as the Pinewoods Milkweed (Asclepias humistrata), rely on good land management for survival and have less incidence of monarch diseases than exotic varieties such as tropical milkweed.

A cluster of Pinewoods Milkweed with large leaves and clusters of small, pink flowers set against a sandy soil with green grasses.

Pinewoods Milkweed like this can still be found growing wild in ELAPP nature preserves.

Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus)

A Fiery Skipper butterfly, with orange and brown markings, feeds on the intricate purple and white flower of a passion vine.

Another beautiful skipper species, the Fiery Skipper is named for the bright orange coloration of the males. Bill photographed this species nectaring on a Maypop flower (Passiflora incarnata). You can read all about Florida’s native passion vines in our other article on the subject. Fiery Skippers use various grass species as host plants. Another reason to include native, bunching grasses in flower gardens!

Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos)

A Pearl Crescent butterfly with intricately patterned orange and black wings rests on a bright green leaf with a shadowed forest floor in the background.

This delicate butterfly is common throughout much of North America. It relies on asters, such as Smooth Aster (Symphyotrichum laeve) as host plants.

Viceroy (Limenitis archippus)

A Viceroy Butterfly with orange and black patterned wings mimicking a Monarch rests on a dry grass stalk against a soft-focus green grass background.

The viceroy has subtle differences in patterning, but their smaller size and angular shape can give them away! The caterpillars for this butterfly also look completely different from the Monarch.

Were you fooled? Famous for mimicking the appearance of the Monarch, the Viceroy is a stunning butterfly in its own right. Viceroys use willows and poplars as host plants for their caterpillars; Coastalplain Willow (Salix caroliniana) is an excellent choice!

Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae)

A Gulf Fritillary butterfly, with bright orange wings marked with black and white spots, sips nectar from a cluster of pink flowers.

The bright orange Gulf Fritillary is a joy to see in any garden. This species uses passionflower vines, like the Maypop (Passiflora incarnata) we saw earlier, as host plants.

Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)

A Gray Hairstreak butterfly, with its distinct gray wings edged with orange and adorned with black and white spots, sits on some small, white flowers.

One of the most common hairstreak species, the Gray Hairstreak can be found in a variety of habitats. They are known to use a wide range of host plants, including mallows and peas. Partridge pea (Cassia fasciculata) is an excellent choice for a showy host.

Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus)

A Zebra Swallowtail butterfly with striking black and white striped wings and red and blue markings feeds on small purple flowers amidst green shrubbery.

The striking black and white striped pattern of the Zebra Swallowtail makes it a highly sought-after species among butterfly watchers. This swallowtail uses pawpaws (Asimina species) as its host plant. Pawpaw shrubs grown in abundance in well managed, fire dependent ecosystems, such as Bell Creek Nature Preserve, where large concentrations of Zebra Swallowtails can still be seen!

If you’d like to learn more about how to utilize native host plants in your landscapes, as well as the native host plant for the above Buckeye butterfly (Junonia coenia), check out this month's lead article on native plant gardening. I’d like to thank Bill Carlisle for supplying all these amazing pictures, and for all the good work he does preserving the natural environments which allow these butterflies to thrive in Hillsborough County. For more information on species listed, or to do research of your own, I highly recommend visiting the University of Florida’s Entomology and Nematology and the FloridaNative Plant Society webpages, which served as essential references for this article.

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