5 Orange Flowers with Butterfly Powers

Orange Blooms that Bring Home the Butterflies

Looking for Beautiful Orange Blooms that Bring Home the Butterflies? 5 Orange Flowers with Butterfly Powers
Orange is the color of scrumptious sorbet, autumn-touched leaves, and prize-winning pumpkins…it’s also the main color of magnificent monarch butterflies!

Would you like to add orange ambience to your butterfly garden? If so, there are wonderful floral options to satisfy both you and your monarch guests.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the dwindling  monarch population over the past two decades. As gardeners, we have a great opportunity  to help save the monarchs, while making our butterfly garden dreams come true at the same time!

All of the orange flowers pictured below have long bloom periods to maximize potential visitors to your abode. Try one or more to start your butterfly garden party for monarchs and other beneficial pollinators…

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1. Cosmos sulphureus (cosmic orange cosmos)

These blaze-orange beauties are an easy-to-grow annual. These compact cosmos attract monarchs, other butterflies and bees. Blooms repeatedly with deadheading.

Orange cosmic cosmo flower
Cosmic Beauty

2. Tithonia rotundifolia (Mexican Sunflower) 

A must-plant annual for North American butterfly gardens. Click the link above to discover other pollinators attracted to this glorious orange giant.

A contrasting Orange flower of Tithonia rotundifolia
Popular Mexican Destination

3. Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed)

A long blooming native milkweed best known for its ability to attract a wide variety of butterflies and beneficial pollinators. The only milkweed species with orange flowers.

Butterfly Weed is a popular nectar stop for many butterflies and their pollinator friends.
Photo by Robert & Pat Rogers of PLR Photos

4. Pseudogynoxus chenopodioides (Mexican flame vine)

This fast-growing climbing vine is a perennial for USDA hardiness zones 9 and above, but  you can pot them to be overwintered in colder zones. The photo below is my second year plant which will start blooming before July…in Minnesota! If fertilizing, use a phosphorous-based fertilizer to promote flowering.

Mexican flame vine puts out brilliant orange blooms irresistible to monarchs
A Fast Climber

5. Buddleja hybrid (‘orange sceptre’ butterfly bush)

A hybrid butterfly bush with beautiful orange flowers that attract butterflies and hummingbirds from early summer through first frost…cold hardy to zone 8.

For a whole rainbow of garden flowers check out our butterfly plants page

Please post below if you have any questions or comments about adding orange flowers to your butterfly garden.
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4 Comments

  1. i’m trying 3 butterfly weed, asclepias tuberosa (orange/yellow mix flowers) in a sunny border that gets watered with the lawn. i’m in zone 5-6. what do think my chances are? do i need to fertilize? when and with what? do you think they’ll spread if i don’t bind the pods? that would be fine with me.

    thanks, barbara

    1. Hi Barbara, many factors contribute to the success/failure of milkweed but your spot sounds like it should work. You can fertilize with a general all-purpose fertilizer, but it’s not absolutely necessary. Here are some we’ve used over the years:

      Butterfly Garden Fertilizers

  2. We have a plant called a bird of paradise, blooms are orange and yellow, they attract butterflies. Do know this plant?

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