Effects of Color Pattern Arrangement and Size of Color Mass on Butterfly Visitation in Zinnia elegans

The popular literature abounds with design suggestions for creating successful butterfly gardens. In many of these sources of information, the implication is made that greater numbers of butterflies will be attracted to gardens having large masses of single, or similar, color flowers than to those having either several colors mixed together in an area, or those with single colors planted in narrow rows. In this study we used a variety of color forms of Zinnia elegans N. J. von Jacquin ‘Peter Pan’ to examine these two aspects of butterfly gardening. We found that changing the design of plots from blocks to rows to random placement of colors had no effect on butterfly visitation. We also found that increasing the size of single color plots resulted in increased numbers of butterflies visiting those plots.