By growing borage (Borago officinalis), I’ve been feeding butterflies all along and didn’t realize it.

I love Portland, but I’ve been lamenting its scarcity of butterflies since moving here two years ago. Back in the Ohio Valley, I raised monarchs, viceroys, tiger swallowtails, zebra swallowtails (my favorite), giant swallowtails, spicebush swallowtails, pipevine swallowtails, red-spotted purples, and American ladies from eggs and held them on my finger while they dried their wings in preparation for their first flight.

I was the butterfly lady who would bring chrysalises in to work, so others could watch them emerge, too.

But butterflies aren’t too common here, and I haven’t bothered to learn much about local species and get their host plants into my garden. I’m growing lots of milkweed on the off-chance that a monarch swings by (I did see one breeze through earlier in the year), but other than that, I’ve done a poor job of providing for butterflies.

So, I was working near one of my holding beds today when a painted lady butterfly stopped by. She had the urgent behavior of a female looking for a host plant, which I recognized well. She would hover over a plant and land, “tasting” it with her feet to see if it was suitable, moving hurriedly from one plant to another. She was concentrating on my borage, which I have everywhere. It has seeded itself around and I let some plants live because it pleases the bees.

But borage is not a food plant for painted ladies, or so I thought.

I remembered that they ate thistles. Poor thing! She saw my messy holding bed and thought it would be a good place to score some thistle, saw the scratchy leaves and got excited, but tasted it and it was only borage.

I consulted my butterfly books to see what else painted lady caterpillars ate. Hollyhocks! I happened to have three little hollyhocks I’d grown from seed for the heck of it but had never planted, so I threw them in my holding bed and watered them in, feeling satisfied that I’d done what I could and that maybe she’d be back.