A blue longwing, notable for its iridescence, and a zebra longwing feed on orange zinnias.These yellow marigolds attracted painted lady butterflies.
This was my last week tending baby butterflies in 2016, as Dow Gardens’ Butterflies in Bloom is nearly over. The varieties we have only live a few weeks, so when the exhibit ends, the conservatory is closed to visitors while all our insect friends finish out their short but happy lives.
A couple of small postman butterflies hang out with a zebra longwing.The three signs on the door all say essentially the same thing: wait for the attendant because the inner and outer doors may not be open at the same time. The net gets occasional use when butterflies escape into the vestibule and must be retrieved and returned.
The “rules” posted in the vestibule – Elly Maxwell, our entomologist, prefers to limit the rules as much as possible – include
Please keep fingers out of food dishes!
Watch your feet! Be aware of butterflies on the floor.
Please don’t pick the flowers.
Watch out for hitchhikers!
No outside plant material in the display.
These may be the most retro restroom signs I’ve seen.
I brought my lovely daughter Heather, who proved adept at finding hidden butterflies – the camouflaged Southern white covered in mist from a fan below, and the Mexican bluewing hiding deep within a plant but still in a sunny spot, below that.
(As a child, she was our “finder” when objects went missing. The Southern white butterfly eventually concerned her enough that she asked me to check on it, so I moved it to a sunny and dry spot, and it took off immediately.)
This butterfly is also blue and the same size, but it is a bluewave. While the Mexican blue is blue with white stripes, the bluewave is black with blue stripes.She also said she thought she had found a mating pair, and she had – these blue morphos. They’re by the outward-sloping metal walls of the conservatory and the netting inside them.I told her I was hoping to get a blue morpho open (me and so many other people) so she kept an eye out for me. This one in the orchid room was a tease.
We didn’t plan to have moths this year and so our moth case isn’t out in the exhibit. Moths lay eggs quickly so we don’t want them out in the conservatory and always keep them separate. But a supplier sent us some luna moth cocoons so we dealt with it. Elly is collecting the moths for possible use in a pinned collection she is creating.
A recently emerged luna moth next to a row of cocoons.This arched-wing cattleheart emerged about 15 minutes before I took the picture. Note how fat the body is, with waste fluid yet to be expelled, and that the wings have not fully unfolded, let alone begun to dry. This butterfly takes 2-3 hours to be ready to leave the emergence case.A blue morpho ready for release, clinging momentarily to the inside of the emergence case door.Gotcha! Or at least enough to show why these are among visitor favorites.An orange Julia sunning itself.This plant was a popular perch for zebra longwings.
This week I’ll largely post photos. That’s what most people want anyway.
There was a lot of emergence in this, the first full week of Dow Gardens’ Butterflies in Bloom. We also had three mating pairs, which I haven’t seen this early on. For the most part people kept a respectful distance, but one woman plucked a mating pair off a marigold when I was busy elsewhere and put them on her toddler grandson to photograph. SERIOUSLY? Like you’d want to be bothered that way. And no, they were not at all inclined to separate; I don’t know how long they go at it, but some of them remained fond of each other for my entire 2-hour shift.
Mating great yellow Mormon and swallowtailSame pair, side viewA zebra longwing on one of the marigolds brought into the conservatory for the butterfliesA trio at one of the food dishesA Mexican bluewing whose coloring is more of a light violet than the usual cobalt blueA starry night cracker, one of my favorite varietiesA different starry night cracker, sharing a bananaAnother of our smaller varieties, a buckeyeSomewhat larger, a malachiteA great yellow Mormon without one of its telltale swallow”tails”Same variety, different specimen; note the two “tails”A little girl asked why one butterfly didn’t have eyes and I said it did, but they were black … like this one’sMore flying critters …… and another …… and anotherMating pipevine swallowtails; note the top one’s wing is so battered you can see the yellow of the marigold through it
A sunny day meant lots of emergence for Butterflies in Bloom this week. When the temperature hit 85 in the Conservatory, the vents opened, so keeping the floors wet was a challenge this week. I still managed to squeeze in a few photos, and stayed after my shift to try for a few more.
This shows the underside of the wing of the butterfly pictured at top, the spicebush swallowtail. This one is hanging in our “nursery” Norfolk pine for some extra attention and drying time.
A Mexican bluewing still in the chrysalis case. The dark spots on the TENA pad are meconium, or waste fluid, that the butterflies expel as they unfurl and flap their wings to dry while hanging. We put pads under each chrysalis shelf and spray them heavily with water to boost the humidity in the case.
A chrysalis for one of the owl butterflies, I believe the giant owl. See how it’s transparent at the top? The Dow Gardens entomologist, Elly Maxwell Grosteffon, said this one likely would be emerging within the next day.
I reached out to Elly for help when I couldn’t identify this while editing and she told me it is a lacewing. Many photos show the tops of butterfly wings, so identifying by the undersides is harder. It gets trickier still because so many varieties have duller undersides for camouflage, such as the popular blue morpho, which is brown with a line of large spots on the undersides, but a brilliant blue on the wing tops. The blue morphos also are notoriously uncooperative for cameras.
A small postman.
A giant swallowtail.
A queen, which is the type, not the gender. It is somewhat battered, likely from courting rituals. I find the orange Julias and zebra longwings especially amorous, and sometimes gently shoo them out of the nursery when they try to mate with a new insect, such as the orange sulphur that crashed with its wings furled and had trouble hanging onto the tree at all. Sadly, it did not survive.
Above, a pipevine swallowtail. Below, my favorite photo of the week, a paper kite hanging from its chrysalis.
Beth's Planet 