Roses, Native Plants and the Karner Blue Butterfly
Monday June 14, 2021
The weather has cooled off quite a bit from the 30 degree heat we were having. I finished up the Rose Garden sketch proper and changed it up a bit for ease of mowing. Not that the labyrinth wouldn’t have been fun. Just a little insane in such a small space and with an electric mower.
I really do need to find some rebar to make some hose guards on the Potager though. I keep squishing the alliums at the front of one bed and the orach in another. Heavy hoses, I say! They are great for not easily getting holes but rubbish at graceful movement.
I’ve concocted the idea of non-native neutral planting*, kind of like a neutral carbon footprint. We all use ‘carbon’ to varying degrees throughout the day, use of electricity, driving instead of walking, etc. Many people can’t completely eliminate its use from their lives, so instead they choose to do other things to try and make less impact, less of a carbon footprint. Maybe they have to drive to get groceries so they use reusable bags instead of plastic ones. They buy refillables where they can. They buy paper or cardboard packaged goods over plastic where possible.
So why can’t I apply this principle to the garden?
I love roses, especially, it appears, Gallic roses - not native.
The rose garden, give or take, with little bluestem grass.
Fortunately roses don’t live in a vacuum in the garden, they're best underplanted with something and require other plants to provide pest protection and support.
Alliums, for instance, help improve the scent of roses as well as provide protection from numerous pests.
I could go out and buy all manner of cultivated varieties of alliums, and I have bought some because they are beautiful. Alliums hail from North America after all and the bees still love their cultivars as much as the native pants.
But to balance out my native/non-native planting, why not buy native alliums as well?
Allium canadense, or Wild Garlic, may not be the most striking plant but it is local and attracts hummingbirds, butterflies and native bees. This gives them a food source that is well suited for them, even if my Gallic roses are not.
If you want something fancier, Showy Wild Garlic (Allium canadense var. Lavendulare) may be more your style. From the central United States, it is another bee and butterfly magnet with much larger, flouncier flowers than Allium canadense.
Other options include: Nodding Onion (Allium cernuum), Wild Leek (Allium tricoccum) and Prairie Onion (Allium stellatum), all from our region.
I ordered some Prairie Onion and Wild Garlic for my rose garden to plant with some cultivated varieties that I got.
I also love the look of a mixed rose border with grasses, it adds a lightness and freshness, not the stuffy old rose gardens of yore.
Little Bluestem is the perfect match for planting between the roses because it doesn't get too tall or wide.
I also ordered some Ear-Leaved Brome (Bromus Latiglumis) for the shady back of the border under Bonnie and Clyde. This grass provides excellent habitat for birds.
Bottlebrush grass (Elymus Hystrix) has an amazing texture to it that I think will add visual interest in the back and middle of the border in shadier areas.
A flower that does best when planted amongst grasses, for support, is Blue Sage (Salvia azurea). Native to the States south of us, it makes an excellent rose companion, as all salvias do, with the added benefit of being mostly native for our pollinators. It also blooms late summer into fall, a time when the garden needs blooms and blue is always a bonus.
Many people love the contrast of texture and height when you add delphinium, lupines or foxglove to the mixed border with roses. It adds spikiness to softness, linear to globular, and height in the back that holds interest really well.
That’s why I ordered some Dwarf False Blue Indigo (Baptisia australis var. minor) and Tall bellflower (Campanula americana), as well as Lupinus perennis or the Wild Lupine. The blue/violet will provide nice contrast to the pinks and purples of the roses that I’ve chosen and also shape contrast in the tall spikes of blue/violet flowers compared to the round pink or purple roses.
Tall larkspur (Delphinium exaltatum) is another blue/purple spiky flower, from south of Lake Erie, and will provide a great hummingbird, bee and butterfly attractor that is North American native.
A word on Lupines
Lupinus perennis is the only native lupine to Ontario, and is mostly extirpated along with its friend the Karner Blue Butterfly. Efforts are being made to bring the Wild Blue Lupine back in many gardens throughout Ontario, especially ones specializing in tallgrass prairie restoration.
Here is the perfect example of how a cultivar just doesn’t cut it.
When we lived up north we would regularly drive back and forth to visit my family and in June, driving along the highway near Powassan, there were whole sections filled with what I believed to be ‘wild lupines’ of all different colors. There was also a field of them in Cochrane.
What you see in the ditches and fields are more often than not Russel Mix lupines from someone’s garden. They readily spread wherever you throw the seeds.
So when I first read about the Karner Blue being extirpated I didn’t understand. There were so many lupines about, why couldn’t it get enough food?
Here is where understanding specialist species becomes really important.
A specialist is like your picky 3 year old that will only eat chicken fingers. You try everything, try to convince them other food is delicious, try to make it look like chicken fingers, but they know, and they will not eat it.
A Karner blue butterfly lives for only five days. They will also only feed, mate and lay their eggs on the wild lupine leaves.
This means that if there are no Wild Lupine leaves nearby, they die. And because they did not mate on lupine leaves and because they did not lay any eggs on lupine leaves, there will be no new Karner Blue Butterflies in that area. Ad infinitum.
Hence extirpation.
If only Russel knew what he has done.
A side note on a side note: I recently learned that Spotted Bee Balm (Monarda punctata) blossoms can attract Karner Blue. Would this indicate that they are branching out? Possibly due to the lack of proper wild lupine?
Back to the Rose Garden
While creating my Pinterest inspiration board I saw quite a few examples of roses mixed with sea holly or scotch thistle for the spiky pom-pom effect with the chubby ruffliness of the roses.
Rattlesnake master is a great native option for this. Though its typical range is to points south of us, it is still a North American plant not a European plant therefore will be closer ecologically to the food source that our native bees, moths and flies enjoy. It is also the host to the Black Swallowtail, a butterfly that does live here.
Other taller plants I want to intersperse among the roses are Wild Quinine (Parthenium integrifolium) which attracts Halictine bees, wasps, flies, and beetles; Zig Zag Goldenrod (Solidago flexicaulis) for a pop of bright late season yellow in the shady areas and pollinator appeal/support; Sky Blue Aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense)
Roses benefit from having an underplanting about a foot from their roots so that the soil isn’t bare. Many people choose nepeta or salvia cultivars for this.
I thought Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum) would be a good plant for spring and early summer and it is an excellent flower for attracting all sorts of pollinators.
Round-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica americana) is a very early spring flower that provides a very necessary food source for queen Bumble bees coming out of hibernation. They are also visited by butterflies, bees, beetles^, and flies.
And the purple ones are my favorite spring flowers!
Hairy Beardtongue (Penstemon hirsutus) is a mid to late spring bloomer attracting bumblebees, butterflies and hummingbirds. It is also the larval host plant of the Chalcedon Checkerspot, the Baltimore Checkerspot and Edith's Checkerspot. Texturally this continues the spiky contrast into the underplanting.
Wild Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricata) is another good option for shade or partial shade and will spread slowly but surely. The blue flowers combined with Wild Columbine’s orange flowers would be a lovely combination for a woodland garden. This is the truly native wild phlox as opposed to the invasive Dame’s Rocket, which is a member of the mustard family.
I chose several different violets for beautiful early spring colour and pollinator support - Bird’s Foot Violet (Viola pedata), Prairie Violet (Viola pedatifida) and Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia). They all bloom from April to June and are an early nectar source for bees and other pollinators. They are also one of the larval host plants for the Edward's Fritillary butterfly, Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly, the Coronis Fritillary butterfly, the Mormon Fritillary butterfly, and the Variegated Fritillary butterfly.
I have Wild Bergamot, Anise Hyssop and I had planted some Spotted Bee Balm, but I can’t see it yet. I also have tiny Little Bluestems popping up in the cells that I sowed. And a seed order from Prairie Moon nursery is coming soon. So, lots of native options to plant around my non-native roses in the Rose Garden.
What’s the ratio to equal out native to non-native?
I don’t exactly know. I think everyone will figure out their version of reciprocity towards the wildlife inhabiting their garden.
* Let us not confuse this with zero-sum game theory, in which a win on one side automatically means a loss for the other.
Gardening with native plants should not be considered a loss in any way, as if by adding a rose you have lost all benefit to your food web, or by only planting native you have lost the joy of the scent of Earth Angel wafting on the breeze.
What native or non-native plants win or lose is their value to the wildlife and food web that your garden is creating. They must be symbiotic, not parasitic. We want net benefit in our garden, not a zero at the end.
^I’ve mentioned beetles a couple times being attracted to certain plants. Due to our issues with bugs most people are repelled by beetles but they are essential aspects of the garden. We want beetles in my garden my friends! For evidence of their value please read more about Beetle Banks here.
Tuesday to Thursday June 15-17, 2020
I continued work on the Rose Garden, edging the beds and laying down as much cardboard as I had to put mulch down thereby smothering the grass instead of having to dig it up. I was able to transplant some hosta and widow’s tears I already had to the beds under our Snowball bush and planted more Butterflyweed throughout.
I also finished off the three other bean tripods that I needed for the Potager. These were planted with the Trionfo Pole Beans and some Sunset or Sadie’s Horse runner beans. I planted some of them and also some True Cranberry Pole beans around the gazebo and arches where my sweet peas are not coming up.
Note for next year: Sweet peas do not grow up through mulch, they suffocate and die. So do not put mulch over top of them. Leave the ground open until they show themselves and then maybe put a little around them.
Friday June 18, 2021
A day of storm cloud and thunder and fuzzy-headedness.
If you want more information on the list of native plant seeds that I’ve ordered for the Rose Garden from Prairie Moon Nursery I put together a write-up with pictures here.
