Perhaps the wrong name

A few days ago, walking the downtown river trail, I came across a Buddleia davidii, commonly called butterfly bush, in full bloom, even in mid-October. 

Who could not love that color? And while there were not many butterflies out on a chilly fall morning, the bush was hosting several fat bumblebees, of which, unfortunately, I did not get a decent photograph. And who doesn't love bumbles? Even this late in the season, the plant's leaves were in pristine condition, not a single spot or hole.

What's not to like?

Plenty. Butterfly bush is actually not a good butterfly plant. Yes, it provides a gorgous, sweet-smelling snack bar for adult butterflies over a long season, but those perfect leaves are a tip-off: this plant feeds not a single North American caterpillar, AKA baby butterfly. When we give this exotic plant a home in our yards, we are in fact reducing butterfly habitat, which must include space to reproduce if we want more generations of the fluttering creatures we purport to love. To make the case against buddleia even more strongly, more than 95% of North American songbirds feed their young almost exclusively on caterpillars: planting the misnamed "butterfly bush" also reduces the reproductive capacity of the birds whose nestlings will starve without the fat and protein provided by caterpillars. A single brood of chickadees, to give just one example, requires between 6000 and 9000 caterpillars before they can leave the nest. Earthworms are no good, being another non-native species providing little nutritional value.

This is what a leaf on a useful plant should look like in fall (unless of course it has been completely munched): spotted and full of holes.

If some of these leaves are turned over, they will reveal eggs or larvae hiding on the underside.

Something hiding on a riverside silver maple

I know that our gardening instinct calls for perfect, unblemished  plants, but nature requires imperfection and transience. Plants must be chewed for animals to live, and we bipedal primates require the interaction of plants, animals, and microbes for our own thriving.

Filling a yard with "butterfly bush" is the equivalent of feeding a child a diet of nothing but gummy bears. 

The plant needs a new name. The real "butterfly bush" is an oak, but that is a subject for another post.