I think it's smart to be aware of setting potentially invasive plants in your garden. However, as with many perennials, something that's invasive in one garden zone may not be in another. I've grown butterfly bush in multiple garden beds for close to 5 years and never found a single unwanted or unexpected seedling.

If you're growing dwarf varieties of Buddleia, you may find information about their seed viability--or the absence of it--online by Googling the cultivar name. The plants in my garden beds were all grown from seed from B. davidii 'Black Knight' which is not a dwarf form. My plants have consistently grown to as much as 6-7 ft. tall each season.

I am aware that Buddleia is listed as invasive in nearby Pennsylvania which is close enough to make me wary and caution me to pay attention.

There are actually some newer, almost sterile versions of butterfly bushes that were bred to get around the problem of being invasive. I planted one last year: Miss Molly. Beautiful, smelled fantastic, got to about 5 feet tall. It hasn't sent up any new shoots yet so I hope it survived the winter here in Toronto.

This article talks about the issue and lists some sterile cultivars.

http://insects.about.com/od/butterfliesmoths/fl/Non-Invasive-Buddleia-for-the-Butterfly-Garden.htm

Thanks for the useful information!!! I need to see if I can find the tag. I wish I remembered what they were.

I was going to move them anyway... they are in an area to small for them (they are crowding a nice wigella wines and roses bush).

As mentioned earlier, it is all about location. What is invasive in one area is not necessarily invasive in another. Check with whoever monitors these issues in your locale before planting.

Here in WA and OR, Buddleia davidii IS considered invasive. It spreads profusely by seed into disturbed and natural areas. Butterfly bush can now be found commonly along riversides and roads and in cleared forests throughout western Washington and Oregon, at times significantly impacting riparian habitat and riverside conditions and impeding forest regeneration. Each flower can produce upto 40,000 seeds and the seeds have a 80% viability rate -- that's a whole lot of potential plants scattered around natural areas. Here, it is not at all uncommon to see butterfly bushes along the side of the road or growing through the cracks in disused parking lots or along alleyways..

One of the ways to counteract the problem is to deadhead the flowers as soon as they are done blooming. Makes for a much tidier shrub as well :-) The second is to look for sterile hybrids. There are quite a number of these on the market already and new cultivars introduced regularly. They are just as attractive in bloom and as appealing to butterflies as B. davidii and they also tend to be more compact in form.

Here is a link that might be useful: sterile buddleia cultivars

Ok... mine is a lilac chip.... so low fertility... its a proven winner brand and on their website they say its seedless (which I take to mean sterile)... I'll be moving it somewhere where it has more room in case it wants to spread out a bit...

I find articles like this completely ridiculous because they imply that people planting butterfly bush are ONLY planting butterfly bush and nothing to support the caterpillars. Everyone I know planting butterfly bush also plants plenty of host plants.

As for invasiveness, you can plant non-invasive varieties like 'buddleja buzz' or 'miss molly'. I'm not sure if sterile varieties actually attract butterflies, but you can try those too...

Tony

This article strikes me as somewhat over-zealous, advocating to NEVER ever plant a butterfly bush again. I have only two Buddleia out of hundreds of species and thousands of individual plants in the whole yard. Neither one has ever cast a seedling - so it has not proven to be invasive in my region. And there's no denying it attracts butterflies like crazy, so I think that it can be used as a valued nectar plant, as long as it's not invasive and in balance with other host and nectar plants.

Meanwhile I am trying to do my part and am developing a yard that provides numerous resources for the critters. I grow predominantly native plants (but am not a purist), numerous host and nectar plants for butterflies, and my yard is a certified Monarch Waystation. I also raise butterflies as a hobby. Very fun and relaxing! Just started 3 or 4 new host plants from seed this year (Pearly everylasting, false nettles, gas plant).

It is one of those bait and switch "articles". They used the words butterfly bush as the search grab. Anyone else notice that once there, the message isn't just don't plant buddleia but don't plant anything non-native?

That isn't to say the message is wrong, just that the way it was done is distasteful to me. When you feel the need to use phrases such as "People rationalize their perceived need..." you have left the educating behind and are preaching from a different box.

That is what I think.

Since you asked. :-)

I bought my Blueberry Cobbler last year (picked this one over some of the more traditional variants because I had read it wasn't invasive/almost sterile). I hasn't shown any signs of life yet... I'm hopeful but weary. At any rate, I'll get another non-invasive one again if it doesn't make it. I loved mine - it was beautiful, probably a little crazy looking (I let it go wild) and butterflies were all over it (I even had my first hummingbird!). I have it in a little mini-butterfly garden (or I should say, in progress butterfly garden) with some butterfly weed, agastache and this year, dill (I never got to cook with any of my dill - the caterpillars made an all-you-can-eat buffet out of it - fine by me!). So I'm trying to have an even mix of refreshments for adult butterflies but something for the kids, too.

Terrene, just because it is not sending seedlings up in your yard does not mean that seedlings aren't popping up elsewhere. Your situation reminds me of a friend of mine who has purple loosestrife by his pond. Because he has never had any issues with seedlings popping up in his yard, he feels it is not an invasive issue. However, the major spreading factor for the loosestrife is the same as it is for the Budd. -- seeds being spread by birds.

Buddleia are beautiful, but if one is going to have one, it is wisest/responsible to get a sterile hybrid or to make sure one deadheads.

Buddleja seeds are spread by the wind, and to a lesser extent by water, rather than birds. They are produced in huge quantities and can spread far and wide.

Paul, I regularly walk and observe the flora in the neighborhood, I have also been removing invasives from mine and neighboring properties since 2005. Will sometimes carry a folding saw while out hiking around to cut the big Oriental bittersweet vines, figure there are 5,000 less berries from that vine, or pull out a few garlic mustards or Lythrum salicaria (try to anyway this plant has tenacious roots). Does it help? Maybe a little, but not much esp. when neighbors let invasive plants overgrow on their properties.

So there are plenty of invasive plants in this area, but Buddleia davidii is not one of them, at least not at this time. Also, Massachusetts has a prohibited plant list, and B. davidii is not on it. Of course there are plants that haven't exercised their full invasive potential yet in the state, so one should stay alert to the emergence of new invasive species and adapt accordingly.

Floral, I have seen some of the smaller finches perched on seedheads removing/eating the seeds. Since it is possible for some seeds to successfully manage to pass through a bird's system undigested, I would think birds would also constitute a vector for spreading. I had not realized, however that wind is the main method. Thanks for the correction!

Terrene, buddleia may not be a listed invasive in MA but it is considered potentially invasive throughout the midAtlantic states and its spread in the area has been noticed and tracked by those who monitor such issues.

And it's very important NOT to make the assumption that just because one does not see obvious signs of an invasive or potentially invasive plant's dispersal locally or even in more remote natural areas, it is not a problem. That's kind of taking the ostrich with its head in the sand approach - if I can't see it, it doesn't exist. Doesn't work like that :-))

Not only have I never seen Buddleia reseeding around waste places/roadsides in this area, I can't even get it to survive in my garden, so I don't see invasiveness as an issue locally.

I am highly dubious about the proposition that non-native plants supply no nourishment to native insect/animal species. Clearly chickadees and lots of other birds/animals have adapted to using these plants. There was an article in the Sunday New York Times last week from a garden writer emphasizing this (and recommending that people plant a wide variety of native and non-native plants to nourish the local wildlife)*.

*this writer's recommendations probably should be taken with a grain of salt, seeing as how his article was primarily about gardening with climate change (he seems to think that a single colder than normal winter is good evidence of climate change, which actually is documented not by single seasonal variation but changes occurring over many years).

Here is a link that might be useful: gardening for climate change

This post was edited by eric_oh on Sat, May 10, 14 at 11:14

"Potentially" means maybe. I think it is a little overzealous to wish to ban every "potentially" invasive plant. People have been growing butterfly bush for a hundred years on the East Coast and they are not invasive. They are not even completely hardy here in many cases.