Butterfly Host Plants: Willows & Mourning Cloaks -- SoCalNPG -- Ep.21

This video virtual tour is about the Mourning Cloak butterfly, its sources of nectar, tree sap or rotten fruit, and its host plants or food plants, willows. They will also be attracted to your backyard if you have a nice clearing surrounded by trees. This will be a display site for the male Mourning Cloaks where they can perch to survey their territory, look for females, and drive off competitors.
This is part of a series on butterfly gardening and how to attract butterflies to your native plant garden by planting butterfly host plants.
You greatly increase your chances of attracting butterflies to your garden if you plant butterfly food plants. In most cases these are native plants. Butterflies will lay eggs on the host plant, the eggs will become caterpillars which will eat the host plant. After they pupate, they'll emerge, in your backyard, as butterflies and the cycle will begin again.

[@MiTmite9]

0:48 Painted Lady butterfly 1:10 Mourning cloaks will "nectar" on Weeping bottlebrush, too.

[@southerncalnativeplantgard3777]

I don't know weeping bottlebrush by that name. Has it another name?

[@christinasornbutnark1208]

Morning Cloaks swarm our huge weeping willow tree every year in our Huntington Beach home by the 10’s of thousands. I think it’s all about the weeping willow tree.

[@southerncalnativeplantgard3777]

I'm sure you're right. Willows are the host plant for mourning cloak caterpillars. Have you ever noticed caterpillars on the willow some weeks after the mourning cloaks have swarmed it?

[@deltalegacyone]

Nymphalis antiopa will also feed on various Ulmus spp. ( And yes I have also noted Nymphalis antiopa male chasing a Papilio rumiko.)