Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: What's popular among the hbirds in your area?, 1 by salvia_lover

salvia_lover wrote:
Greenlife, I agree about Salvia splendens. My sunbirds (the Old World nector drinking/hovering equivalent to the New World Hummers) ignore it completely. I think it's just too small compared to the other Salvias which add some degree of safety by being higher up off the ground (and therefore harder for cats and other predators to creep up on the tiny birds while they get at the nectar). They also ignore all of the many Petunias I put in for the hummingbird moths. The Sunbirds visit my tallest Salvias more than anything else in the garden. The things they visit most often are (in order of preference (i.e. in order of which ones they visit most often):

-Salvia fulgens (actually this is still not a solid ID, just the one the garden center gives as it's name....and I haven't found anything that looks better despite having my reservations about this matching an S. fulgens ID)
-Salvia 'Indigo Spires'
-Salvia leucantha
-Salvia guaranitica 'Costa Rica Blue'
-all the various Citrus (lemon, lime, clemantine, grapefruit, limquat and kumquat....the latter not really a Citrus, but treated the same by the Sunbirds and myself ;-)
-Tecoma alata
-Cuphea llavea (Batface Cuphea)
-Vitex trifolium 'Purpurea' (Arabian Lilac)
-Acmena smithii (Lillypilly)
-Pyrostegia venusta (winter flowering in my climate)

There's another plant I would like to add to the above list next to Cuphea llavea in popularity, but I can't remember it's name so I'll post a pic of it instead :-)

I also see them visiting my neighbor's apple tree a lot.

They visit other things in the garden, but the above list is what they prefer.

-Julie