The Vibrant, Container-Friendly Flower That Keeps Butterflies Visiting Your Yard

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Even if you don't have a large yard or outdoor growing space, it's not that difficult to create a butterfly garden using brightly colored flowering plants that grow happily in containers. While there are many flowering spring perennial plants that bring beautiful butterflies to your yard when grown in containers, it's easier to focus on annuals you can grow from seed. One such plant is celosia, a genus known for its abundance of eye-catching blooms. Butterflies flock to the flowers of these quirky plants, especially when you grow them in large containers on a sunny balcony, veranda, or patio.

Celosia, also commonly known as cockscomb, is a genus of interesting flowering annuals — and some perennials. The plants boast one of three styles of flowers — wheat, plumed, and cockscomb — giving you plenty of choice when creating a butterfly-attracting container arrangement. Plus, flower colors are plentiful, ranging from white and yellow to orange, pink, and red. You can mix and match flower shapes and hues in a single planter without even going outside of the genus.

It's not just butterflies that love celosia blooms; bees, wasps, and occasionally hummingbirds will visit them, too. On top of that, these plants are a larval host for the common sootywing butterfly. To make celosia even more desirable, they're easy-to-grow garden fillers that complement a cut flower garden. No matter which species or cultivar you prefer, all celosias are easy to grow from seed. Deadheading the spent flowers will ensure continuous blooming through the growing season for butterflies and other pollinators.

Plumed cockscomb (Celosia argentea) has a striking plume-style flower stalk, as the common name suggests. The bright blooms come in yellow, orange, purple, cream, and red, and the whole ensemble resembles a fluffy flame. You could create a stunning display to lure in butterflies by sowing a Kviter Cockscomb (Celosia argentea) 150-Seed Mix in a large container. These stunners bloom from late spring right through to the first frost.

Wheat celosia (Celosia spicata) is a species that has wheat-type flowers. These bloom as cylindrical, upright flower spikes in mid-summer. Each spike has hundreds of tiny, densely packed flowers that open from the bottom up in shades of pink, purple, and red. Some plants even have bi-colored blooms. This creates a literal feast for visiting butterflies; they can collect lots of nectar from the dainty flowers of one plant instead of fluttering from plant to plant.

Celosia argentea var. cristata (or simply Celosia cristata) has those unusual cockscomb flowers, also sometimes called fasciated blooms. Fasciation is a genetic mutation that produces crested growth tips. These bright red or vibrant yellow velvety flowers will add color to your garden and tolerate the dry soil conditions common in container gardening. The brain-like appearance of the blooms makes them an ideal complement to other, more feathery celosias.