orange Julia – Beth's Planet

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 vestibule, with warning signs and a long-handled net — 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.

The brilliant blue topside of a blue morpho's wings — Gotcha! Or at least enough to show why these are among visitor favorites.

DG041216julia — An orange Julia sunning itself.

This plant was a popular perch for zebra longwings.

Trio of butterflies on pink zinnias — This trio enjoying the pink zinnias brought in for the butterflies includes a monarch, orange Julia and buckeye.

A sunny day made occupants and visitors alike happy at Dow Gardens’ Butterflies in Bloom.

One of the questions I was asked most often Tuesday was, as one child put it, “Why are you putting water on the floor?” With sun pouring through the glass, I had to do this about every hour, more often than usual.

I tell people that many of our butterflies come from jungle and rain forest environments, and while we can’t bring in all of their native plants, we replicate their humidity and temperature the best we can.

Five butterflies sunning on orange zinnias — The sun and orange zinnias combined to make this a popular spot.

Some butterfly nicknames make sense, some less so. Crackers get their name because the males make a “cracking” sound when being territorial. The two below are a gray cracker, which is gray, and a red cracker, which is blue.

The butterfly on the right above is a blue morpho. You can just barely see the blue topside at the wing opening. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just wait for it to open, you clearly are not one of the people who has waited 20 minutes or longer for this to happen.

Tag: orange Julia

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