Buddleia and Butterflies at Priors Oak

The Suffolk Argus v~

Buddleia and Butterflies at Priors Oak

by Trudie Willis

Priors Oak lies adjacent to North Warren, where I have a very large 10-acre garden and still had loads of plants flowering well into autumn. My Buddleia walk has over 10 varieties and after the initial flowering we cut them back about two foot all round and this brings on a full second bloom that is still covering several of the bushes.

It is interesting to see that regardless of the position of the sun on them, the pale blue and double white seem to attract all the late butterflies and on 1st October 2004, I counted ten Red Admirals, six Commas and a Painted Lady on the blue one, whereas the rest of the garden appeared to be just whites, Speckled Woods and the odd remaining Small Copper.

Small Copper

by Douglas Hammersley

Red Admiral

by Douglas Hammersley

I was saddened to read an article decrying the "rather boring Buddleia" recently. For those of you wishing to add one of these prime butterfly bushes please take time to look around as there are now around 30 varieties available!

The flowering ranges from whites, yellows to bright orange, all shades of pink and blues and finally to Black Knight (as its name indicates a deep purple bordering on black). Size and shape vary again from very large and spreading scale down to weeping, standards and small bushes so there really is something for every garden regardless of their size. The earliest to flower is the yellow flowered Globosa and suangely it is the small yellow flowered Weyeriana that is the last to flower and will continue until frosts arrive. So you see the choice is endless and Buddleia does not have to conjure up the thought of a rather spindly tree with uninteresting mauve flowers, and please remember a summer prune will produce a second flowering. I think it is well worth encouraging people to do this summer pruning to get the most of the late nectar. I had another fun sighting that same autumn day. The young hazels we planted in the wildlife area to coppice appeared to be heavily defoliated and I feared a Muntjac, only to see a host of large Lobster moth larvae, they really are weird and interesting caterpillars.