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| Photo Credit: Gerald Klingaman |
| You can attract lots of butterflies to the garden with the small flowers of Chinese abelia |
Butterfly gardening has become a big hit with gardeners, and they’re always looking for plants to attract these “flying flowers.” One of the best for this purpose is the many-flowered Chinese abelia (Abelia chinensis).
This pretty shrub reaches 6 feet tall and spreads with multitudinous branches sticking out in all directions – like Phyllis Diller on a bad-hair day. It produces long, wispy growth covered with maroon-tinged leaves with a predictable triangularity as they cluster along the arching stems. As summer wears on, the plant produces massive terminal clusters of white, bell-shaped flowers with a subtending red calyx, adding to the summertime color of the shrub and making it look like it’s still in “bloom.” As long as the plant continues to make new growth during the summer, it’ll continue to flower. Because Chinese abelia branches so freely, it often suffers mightily at the hands of well-intending gardeners who shape it into round-topped balls that often take on the profile of a giant mushroom.
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