Frequently Asked Questions
Do butterflies pollinate?
- Most butterflies are not good pollinators of flowers.
- Pollen does not regularly stick to their legs or tongue (proboscis)
and the butterflies do not make proper contact with the flower's stigma.
- There are probably some notable exceptions to this such as the pollinia
(a coherent mass of pollen grains often with a stalk bearing an adhesive
disk that clings to insects) of the milkweed flowers sticking to the
tongue and legs of Monarch butterflies.
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