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Project Noah Nature School
Buddleja
Deep purple inflorescence, approx 20-30cm, sweet scented, bee-attracting, plant is 2-3 metres tall, thin woody stems, leaves long paler under slightly rough blah blah......
What really has me curious is that the shade of purple this year seems so much deeper than in previous years (same with every plant around our area) Wondering if anyone else has noticed the difference in shade. Could it be related to the extraordinary rains over the past 12 months compared to the drought of the past decade ?
Spotted on Nov 28, 2011
Submitted on Nov 28, 2011
3 Comments
Ok after a good read it seems that, although naturalised in some parts, the threat to caterpillars is not the problem in Australia. We should be more worried about the the plant invading our riparian areas and simply displacing our native species. I get the impression that most our lepidopterans are already too attuned to our native plants to be interested in placing their eggs on this one. That would explain why I never find anything feeding on this except introduced arthropod species. Thanks again for the info and I'm sorry it's killing your little critters.
Fascinating info thanks TP. I'll certainly need to read more about this. I'm wary of doing butterfly's a favour at the risk of starving bees etc. We have a very different set of insect life here and not much of this plant around - just a few domestic garden plantings.
Did you know that the butterfly bush is perfect for attracting butterfly's, and deadly for caterpillars, that is way it is a noxious weed here in Washington state.
So if you wan't to get rid of this plant you will be doing the butterfly's a favor.