Like most butterflies, Baltimore checkerspots will readily visit blooming flowers to drink nectar, but their caterpillars also need host plants. Plant some turtlehead in your wildlife gardens to support these beautiful butterfly populations! Photo by Alison Hunter.
Want to attract the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly to your gardens? Plant the eastern native turtlehead, which is one of the very few food plants that young Baltimore checkerspot caterpillars can eat.
White turtlehead (Chelone glabra, zones 3-9) grows wild in the wet meadows and woods of eastern North America (from Newfoundland west to Minnesota, and south to Alabama and Georgia), so if you have a damp area with some sunshine, this plant should do just fine without any fertilizer, water or fuss. Turtlehead also adapts to drier soils, but a mulch of chopped leaves or other organic matter is a good idea to help retain soil moisture during dry periods.
White turtlehead (Chelone glabra) blooms in late summer and enjoys the same moist, sunny garden conditions as New England aster and garden phlox. Turtlehead is so-named because its flowers look like the head of a shy turtle peeping out from under its shell. Photo by Ellen Sousa.
The bad news is that deer enjoy eating turtlehead, and in areas where deer populations are unnaturally high, white turtlehead colonies are disappearing fast. If summer deer browse isn’t a problem for you, planting turtlehead may help offset population declines of turtlehead in nearby areas and help Baltimore checkerspots at the same time. A little hard to find for sale in nurseries, white turtlehead is easily grown from seed, or you can usually find plants available at native plant or butterfly garden nurseries.
Pink turtlehead (Chelone lyonii) is another southeastern US native, but more easily found in nurseries because of its pretty pink flowers and vigorous blooming habit. It grows wild in swamps and shores from Virginia south to N. Carolina and Georgia, but is hardy to colder (zone 4) regions such as New England and southern Canada.
Chelone lyonii ' Hot Lips'. Rose-pink flower clusters and lustrous dark-green foliage make pink turtlehead a lovely addition to a damp wildflower meadow or woodland edge. Photo courtesy North Creek Nurseries
Female checkerspots lay a cluster of eggs (called ovipositing) on chelone foliage in summer, and the young caterpillars eat chelone leaves in the safety of a silky nest they build around themselves. In fall, they stop feeding, and hibernate through winter in their communal nest. In spring, the caterpillars leave the nest in search of food plants such as viburnum and fly-honeysuckle (Lonicera canadensis), and continue their life cycle towards a butterfly.
The caterpillars are striking with their bold orange/black bands and scary tubercles (hornlike protusions), but the chrysalis is probably most amazing of all with its raised black and mustard bumps:
Photo of a Baltimore checkerspot chrysalis by Judy Buriss and Wayne Richards, nature photographers who have turned their suburban Cincinnati backyard into a beautiful garden for wildlife such as birds, butterflies and other winged wonders. Visit their backyard habitat at http://butterflynature.com
An interesting note: Although historically, Baltimore checkerspot butterflies preferred to use chelone as a host plant for their eggs, entomologists and butterfly watchers have recently reported population increases of checkerspots where the introduced English plantain (Plantago lanceoloata) grows. Clearly, Baltimore checkerspots are adapting to to use a new food plant where the native chelone is scarce. It’s nothing other than evolution in action!
Tell us, have you seen this beautiful butterfly in your garden, and do they have the plants they need to survive at all stages of their life?
[Ellen Sousa gardens, farms, writes and teaches from Turkey Hill Brook Farm, a small horse farm landscaped as a backyard habitat in the Worcester Hills of central Massachusetts. ]
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Lovely! I grow the pink turtlehead (Chelone lyonii) and experienced some deer munching earlier in the summer! The new flowers have just come out, as it took a while after the first buds were chomped! I have needed to make use of some organic spray to keep the deer away from my turtlehead, phlox, asters and other natives they love to nibble on–no, make that devour! I have not seen this lovely butterfly; the pupa is amazing! I have seen some new butterflies (to me) this year, though, and will be posting about those soon. Great post;-)
Ellen, Turtlehead would be in my garden if it didn’t need moist soil. I’ve not seen the Baltimore checkerspot here, although it’s been a great year for butterflies. They have loved the heat and sunshine. The cheloni flowers are extremely charming, but, the Baltimore checkerspot chrysalis is a fantastic jewel. Nature continues to astonish me with its beauty. gail
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I wish I had a place for Turtlehead to grow. Perhaps a gutter pipe than has the shed roof runoff directed underground to the garden would provide enough moisture? Another project for next spring to find out! Thank you for the inspiring post!
Lisa, yes they do like it damp, but an area with overflow/roof runoff might just work for you! Worth a try! They are easy to grow from seed so not expensive if you experiment that way…
Do you have a nursery source for the white? Or does anyone have a plant or two to share. I live in western NY and have two patches of the pink.
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hi Michelle – I know that North Creek Nurseries sells it mail order:
http://www.northcreeknurseries.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/plants.plantDetail/plant_id/153/index.htm
Since you are in NY, check out the Central NY “Wild Ones” homepage (Habitat Gardening in Central NY) which lists some nurseries that sell native plants:
http://www.hgcny.org/
Good luck!
I wish I could grow Chelone, but my soil is too dry. They have such cool looking flowers.
Interesting, I just read on the White Flower Farm website that the pink chelone (Chelone lyonii) is not used by the Baltimore checkerspots as a food plant, only the white chelone (C. glabra). That is the first I have read of that, I will do some asking around to confirm this.
It is correct that Baltimore Checkerspots only use Chelone glabra, the White Turtlehead. A great resource for butterflies and their host plants in the North American Butterflies and Moths website, which lists the host plants for the Baltimore Checkerspot. I have both pink and white Turtlehead and can attest that they only lay eggs on the white.
That’s good to know Carole, and thanks for the link to the NABA website. That seems to be a good definitive source of host plant information for American caterpillars. The Baltimore checkerspot is unusual among butterflies in that its newly hatched larvae can only eat a few plants (including the white chelone), but the more mature caterpillars that emerge in spring can eat a larger variety of host plants including viburnum and white ash…
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