Is Butterfly Bush (Buddleia) deer resistant?

Fast-growing, drought-tolerant and almost entirely ignored by deer, which is most of why it got planted so widely.

It is also invasive, listed in Oregon and Washington and a nuisance well beyond them, seeding into disturbed ground from every flower head. Sterile and low-seed cultivars now exist and are worth seeking out specifically; the straight species is worth avoiding.

The name oversells what it does for wildlife. Butterfly bush is a nectar plant and nothing more. No native butterfly larva can eat the foliage, so a garden built around it feeds adults passing through while supporting no butterflies at all. Plant it alongside host plants rather than instead of them.

Do deer eat butterfly bush?

Rarely. Rutgers puts Buddleia in the top tier, Rarely Damaged, and NC State lists deer and rabbits among the challenges Buddleja davidii resists, alongside drought, heat, humidity and salt. The leaves are gray-felted underneath and the shrub has a resinous smell, and on the four-tier scale it sits with lavender and Russian sage. The first tier is a record of how seldom damage was observed, not a promise; extension services all open with the line that no plant is entirely deer-proof, and a deer in late winter with nothing else has been recorded testing plants it walked past all summer.

Where it grows

NC State: zones 5a to 9b, full sun, 6 to 12 feet, flowering through summer on scented spikes "4 to 10 inches in length." It is listed as invasive by the NC Invasive Plant Council in the Mountain and Piedmont regions of North Carolina and as a severe threat by the North Carolina Native Plant Society, on top of the Oregon and Washington listings. Sterile cultivars are the only version worth planting.

Protecting butterfly bush

Nothing, in the ordinary run. The one case is a newly planted shrub in its first winter, all of it within reach, and a wire ring for that one season costs less than the plant. Repellent on a plant deer already rate at the bottom of their list is money that belongs on the hostas.

If it is browsed

It flowers on the current year's growth and is normally cut hard in late winter anyway, so a winter browse is a pruning done early. Regrowth from the base reaches flowering size the same summer.