Trees for Butterflies & Hummingbirds

Nectar Source Characteristics

• Butterflies and hummingbirds differ in their feeding habits. Hummingbirds are attracted to tubular flowers in warm colors of yellow, orange, red, purple and pink. Their long beaks and tongues are built for visiting deep flowers with nectar at the bottom. Butterflies prefer flowers with broad landing platforms and many small flowers clustered together for easy insertion of the long, slender tongues without having to move around much. Sometimes plants provide flowers that appeal to both hummingbirds and butterflies, but usually they attract either one or the other.

Small Trees

• Silk tree (Albizia julibrissin), also called mimosa, is a tree that attracts both hummingbirds and butterflies. Feathery long leaves give good shade from an umbrella-shaped canopy, and showy, pink to reddish, fragrant, puff-like flowers appear in summer. Growing 15 to 30 feet tall and 10 to 15 feet wide, deciduous silk tree is hardy in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 6 through 9. Chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus) attracts butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. This deciduous tree has deeply lobed, hand-shaped, gray-green leaves and abundant clusters of lavender flowers at branch ends in summer. It grows in USDA zones 6 through 10, reaching 10 to 20 feet tall and as wide. It is suitable for container growing or small spaces and can be pruned to the desired size.

Large Trees

• Fragrant, showy, white flowers of catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) provide nectar to hummingbirds and butterflies in USDA zones 4 through 8. In "Gardening for the Birds," Thomas Barnes lists it as a larval food plant for the tiger swallowtail. Large heart-shaped leaves cast good shade from this deciduous tree that reaches 40 to 60 feet tall. The even taller tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) can reach 70 to 90 feet high, with greenish-yellow flowers that attract hummingbirds. Because the spring flowers are high in the tree canopy, the hummingbirds aren't low enough for easy viewing as they are with smaller trees. Deciduous tuliptree grows in USDA zones 4 through 9 and is a larval host plant for Eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillars.

Eucalyptus Trees

• Native to Australia, some eucalyptus trees have brightly-colored flowers that attract primarily hummingbirds, but also some butterflies. Red-flowered white ironbark (Eucalyptus leucoxylon var. rosea) reaches 20 feet tall with pink to red pendant, fringy, bell-shaped flowers composed mostly of stamens. Sickle-shaped, gray-green leaves cast a dappled shade in USDA zones 9 and 10. Coral gum (Eucalyptus torquata) grows 15 to 30 feet tall in USDA zones 9 through 11. During late winter, trees produce an abundance of coral-pink flowers that attract hummingbirds and some butterflies to the abundant nectar. The tree bark is brownish gray and leaves are gray-green to light-green.