How to identify, attract & support butterflies through their lifecycle
From a pinhead-sized egg on a milkweed leaf to a monarch drying its wings in the morning sun, the whole butterfly life cycle is raised, filmed and photographed here — along with everything you need to learn how to attract butterflies to a butterfly garden of your own.
The lifecycle
Every butterfly raised here passes through the same four stages, from caterpillar to butterfly. Use it as a pocket caterpillar guide, too — and look for each stage in your own yard.
A female monarch lays each egg singly on the underside of a milkweed leaf — up to a few hundred over her lifetime, but rarely more than one per plant. The egg is tiny, ridged, and pale green. In about four days a caterpillar no wider than a thread chews its way out and eats the eggshell as its first meal.
For roughly two weeks, eating is the whole job. A monarch caterpillar sheds its skin five times (each stage is an instar) and multiplies its weight thousands of times over. Those bold stripes are a warning: milkweed toxins stockpile in its body, making it taste terrible to birds. Near the end it stops eating and goes wandering — the next stage is coming.
The caterpillar spins a silk button, hangs in a J, and sheds its skin one last time to reveal the chrysalis. Inside, the caterpillar body is almost entirely rebuilt — wings, eyes, and flight muscles form from clusters of cells carried since hatching. As emergence nears, the case turns clear and you can see the folded orange wings waiting inside.
The butterfly emerges with crumpled wings, pumps them full of fluid, and dries them in the sun for two to four hours before its first flight. Summer monarchs live two to six weeks, sipping nectar and laying eggs. The final generation of the year is different — those butterflies fly thousands of miles to overwinter and live up to eight or nine months.
As emergence nears, the chrysalis case turns clear and the folded orange wings show through.
Field guide
Butterfly identification gets easy once you know your locals. This is our butterfly species list from one Florida garden — six species that star here. Learn their markings once and you’ll spot these types of butterflies everywhere.
Danaus plexippus
Burnt-orange wings laced with thick black veins and white-spotted black borders. Males carry a black scent spot on a hindwing vein; females look darker and more heavily veined. The only butterfly that migrates thousands of miles — and returns.
Papilio glaucus
Sunny yellow wings crossed by black “tiger” stripes, with a single tail on each hindwing and blue-and-orange eyespots near the tails — females wear the most blue. Glides more than it flaps, sailing over gardens at treetop height.
Papilio cresphontes
North America’s largest butterfly, with wings that can span over six inches. Dark chocolate wings are crossed by a bold yellow sash and a row of yellow spots. Its caterpillar is a famous con artist — patterned exactly like a bird dropping.
Papilio polyxenes
Velvet-black wings edged with two rows of yellow spots and an orange eyespot at each tail corner; females trade some yellow for a shimmering blue wash. Check your herb bed — if something is nibbling the parsley, it’s probably this beauty in disguise.
Phoebis sennae
Pure lemon-yellow wings with almost no markings at all — that clean, unclouded yellow is how it earns its name. One of the strongest, fastest fliers in the garden, it streaks across sunny beds like a scrap of summer sunshine and is among the first butterflies out in spring.
Anartia jatrophae
White wings traced with wavy brown lines, scalloped edges and a row of dark eyespots — like a tiny peacock feather pattern painted on porcelain. A butterfly of damp, sunny places in the warm South, it skims low over the ground instead of soaring, and basks flat on leaves with wings spread wide.
A little science for the road: butterflies and moths both belong to the insect order Lepidoptera — the “scaled wings.” And the classic moth vs butterfly question is answered by the antennae: butterflies in general have club-tipped antennae, fly by day, and rest with their wings folded upright, while most moths have feathery antennae and rest with their wings flat or tented.
The Butterfly Babe YouTube channel is home to real-time chrysalis emergences, caterpillar close-ups and garden tours — the next best thing to standing in the garden yourself. Watching there is the single best way to support the butterflies — every view helps.
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