Butterfly Farms

We've both always loved butterflies and have tried to make our front yard into a garden with food sources for butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, so we went up to see the butterflies at Butterfly Farms in Vista recently.

Butterfly Farms

Most of the butterflies they have, both inside and outside the enclosure, are native to Southern California.

Monarch

Of course there were plenty of Monarchs enjoying the abundant Asclepia.

Gulf Fritillaries on Lantana

I was surprised to see how popular the Lantana was with the butterflies; we ripped out all the overgrown Lantana in our yard long ago, but the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) butterflies were all over the Lantana shrubs in this enclosure.

Indra Swallowtail

An Indra Swallowtail (Papilio indra) also found the Lantana attractive.  And a couple of Indra Swallowtails even found each other attractive.

It was an interesting place.

Sea Holly

We've been trying to add more plants to the butterfly garden in the front yard to attract more butterflies. The Monarchs prefer the Asclepia; in fact, they like it so much that the caterpillars who hatched out in the late fall pretty much stripped all the Asclepia plants out there.  The plants are coming back slowly, but the Monarchs will also reappear soon and start laying eggs again, so we're hoping to have enough Asclepia by the time they do.

Sea Holly

While we love Monarchs, we also want to provide plants that other butterflies may like as well.  Cindy is going to take some parsley and some of the volunteer dill plants that have sprouted in the vegetable garden in back and transplant them to the butterfly garden to attract more of the Anise Swallowtails and other butterflies that like those plants.  We're hoping that if we can attract them to the butterfly garden,  that will keep them far enough away from the Scrub Jays that visit the vegetable garden in the back yard; Scrub Jays regard any caterpillars in the backyard as a legitimate part of the free buffet.

She also recently planted a very beautiful Sea Holly (Eryngium) in the butterfly garden, hoping to attract butterflies such as the Painted Ladies and Mylitta Crescents that like thistles.

I don't know about the Checkerspot butterflies, though:  They like figworts, and I have no idea what a figwort is.

How Do They Do It?

Becoming a butterfly must be a very confusing process to go through:  one day you're a caterpillar with umpteen legs, happily chewing your way through all the vegetable matter you can find, and then you're compelled to form this cocoon, and finally you emerge to find you've only got four legs, but now you've got these wings.  How do they work?  What are they for?  How the heck do the newly emerged butterflies figure it all out?

As I said, our fifth guy flew off, but his flight was a bit wobbly at first.  He flew around the yard for a while but didn't seem to figure out what the plants were for.  Then he flew across the street and landed in the gutter.

He flew back across the street into our yard, narrowly missing a neighbor walking along the sidewalk.

Still figuring it out, I guess.  But at least he flew.

Butterflies of Malaysia

Emerald Swallowtail

While we were attending a family wedding in Fort Wayne, Indiana a couple of weeks ago, we realized that the Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory was a mere two blocks from the Allen County Public Library (second largest genealogy collection in the country, in case you were wondering).

Red Lacewing Landed on My Hand!

Cindy and her dad wanted to see the Botanical Garden, so I took a break from pursuing dead relatives at the library to check out the exhibit of Butterflies of Malaysia with them.

The Conservatory has put on this exhibit, which runs from mid-April to early July, for the past ten years, but this was the first chance we had to see it, and the butterflies were absolutely spectacular.

The exhibit was in a large enclosed tent inside the Conservatory, with a secure entrance and exit staffed by volunteers to make sure no butterflies hitch-hiked their way out of the enclosure.  Since these butterflies are not native to North America, the plants in the enclosure were carefully chosen to avoid plants that these species of butterflies normally choose to lay eggs on; nobody wants to encourage non-native species of caterpillars which could chew up local crops.

Great Orange Tip

Great Eggfly

Leopard Lacewing

It was a spectacular exhibit with species we would never ordinarily see, and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing these beautiful butterflies.

Thanks, Foellinger-Freimann Conservatory!