Garden Forwardshrub
Butterfly bush
Buddleja davidii
Growing guidance
Horticultural figures below are practitioner estimates for planning, pending expert review. The botanical record further down is sourced and verifiable.
Current-climate suitability
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Future-climate resilience
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Sun
Full sun
Soil moisture
free-draining, average
Heat tolerance
Up to about 44°C
Cold tolerance
Down to about -20°C
Waterlogging tolerance
1/5
Drought tolerance
5/5
Mature size
2–3.5 m tall, 3 m spread
Seasonal interest
Mid to late summer · Violet
Maintenance
low
Wildlife supported
General wildlife value 5/5 (verified species relationships are shown only where structured data exists)
Known risks or warnings
Invasive in the US and Australia; plant sterile forms or avoid.
Toxicity: none
Verified botanical record
- Accepted scientific name
- Buddleja davidii Franch.
- Family
- Scrophulariaceae (Lamiales)
- Rank and status
- species · accepted
- GBIF record
- Taxon 3173338
Recorded native range: Portugal Continental
Recorded as introduced in: Alabama, Argentina South, Arkansas, Ascension, Belgium, Bogotá, Bogotá, D.C., Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, British Columbia, Brussels-Capital Region, Bulgaria and 79 further regions
Ranges are exactly as recorded in the GBIF source checklists and may be incomplete for widely cultivated species.
Buddleja davidii (spelling variant Buddleia davidii), also called butterfly-bush, orange eye, or summer lilac, is a species of flowering plant in the family Scrophulariaceae, native to most of China except for the far northeast. It is widely used as an ornamental plant, and many named cultivars are in cultivation. The genus was named Buddleja after the English botanist, Reverend Adam Buddle. The species name, davidii, is after the French missionary and explorer in China, Father Armand David, who was the first European to report the shrub. It was found near Yichang by Dr Augustine Henry about 1887 and sent to St Petersburg. Another botanist-missionary in China, Jean-André Soulié, sent seed to the French nursery Vilmorin, and B. davidii entered commerce in the 1890s. B. davidii was accorded the RHS Award of Merit (AM) in 1898, and the Award of Garden Merit (AGM) in 1941.
Description from Wikipedia — Buddleja davidii (CC BY-SA), shortened and unedited in substance.
Native status and geographic context
- United Kingdom: climate-suitable
- United States: restricted
- Australia: restricted
Native status is never inferred from climate similarity. Plants restricted or invasive in a jurisdiction are excluded from recommendations there.
Demonstration data. Climate, plant and retailer records shown here are realistic samples awaiting horticultural validation and live data connections.