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Like most young children, butterfly babies are picky eaters. Each kind of butterfly has its own preferences. Monarch larvae eat only milkweed leaves, while great spangled fritillary caterpillars require violet leaves. The caterpillars of black swallowtail devour foliage of plants in the carrot family, including dill and parsley. American lady larvae feast on the leaves of pussytoes. Checkered skipper larvae prefer mallows.

Adult butterflies, on the other hand, are more easily satisfied. They’re interested mostly in nectar, but they’re willing to sip it from a wide variety of flowers. This works out well for gardeners, who usually aim to have many different kinds of flowers blooming throughout the growing season anyway.

If you’re planning to create a new butterfly garden or expand an existing one, be sure to include blazing stars (Liatris), a magnet for adult butterflies. Also called gay feathers, members of this plant genus bloom from midsummer to frost. Besides attracting butterflies, blazing stars are also beautiful in the garden and long-lasting in cut bouquets. Most of the flowers are purplish-pink, but there are also white ones.

If you have a sunny spot, you can grow blazing stars no matter whether your soil is wet or dry, sand or clay. You just have to pick the right species. Here are some to consider: