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By April Campbell (Aunt_A)
Awesome is the butterfly that visits every day. She flits, she flutters, she kisses children's faces, and my heart sings for joy. Sometimes it is hard to remember that no matter how lovely a butterfly is, she lives to pollinate the flowers, procreate and leave this world. The butterfly is not even a good parent, unless you call leaving a supply of the proper nutrition in the house being a good mother. Yet, we forgive her for this parental oversight because of her beauty and because that is just the nature of the insect. Mrs_Ed (known as Marna to many of us on Dave's Garden), said that butterflies "help pollinate even though they are going for nectar". She should know; she plants a wonderful butterfly garden and many of the following pictures belong to her. Wikipedia notes that "butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination" and "...feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung, and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies are important as pollinators for some species of plants although in general they do not carry as much pollen load as the Hymenoptera [order that covers bees, wasps and ants]. They are, however, capable of moving pollen over greater distances".1 Butterflies, of course, come in many size and color variations. A tiny butterfly visited our yard just last week; he was only about 1/4-inch long, powder blue, perfectly symmetrical and beautiful. He drank liquid from the dirt that I had just watered, flashed his wings and disappeared from sight. My camera was still inside the house.
My husband and I have had the opportunity to walk through a field full of resting, floating, resting, floating Monarch butterflies as they waited to travel again on their migration path. I often wonder where they rest when we drive down the road and glance over at the subdivision that now fills that field. I have felt sorrow for the hundreds of Monarch butterflies that litter the highways during migration. I want to stop, grab their broken bodies and their broken stained glass wings and nurse them back to life. But usually, one visit with a car brings their migration to an end.
As a child, I wanted to catch butterflies, but only to hold beauty for a moment. I have never been able to understand why a person who "loves" butterflies kills them for a collection. Once, a few years ago, when we were showing houses, I watched a child purposely stomp on bees in the clover. And then I watched him chase a butterfly. He did not want to hold it but desired to tear its wings from its body, to destroy it. The customer is not always right and the child heard a thing or two from me that day. I do not remember that we showed that family any more houses. So, how do butterflies survive? How does even one butterfly continue on to pollinate? Maybe because so many people treasure butterflies. I have heard those who believe we should not interfere with nature; they may be correct to a point. However, the world we have created interferes with nature already.
Thankfully, there are thousands of people who love butterflies. Many are members on Dave's Garden. The Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening forum is available to subscribing members. The first post (a permanent "sticky" post) provides links and information regarding butterfly terms, gathering host plants, purchasing pupae, raising butterflies, identifying butterflies, making homemade butterfly food and even repairing butterfly wings. Other posts are full of butterfly pictures.
Feel free to browse Dave's Garden BugFiles, a massive database of insects and spiders. Click on these BugFiles links to be dazzled by:
The above links represent only a few of the butterflies in our world and in BugFiles. I have heard that there are at least 15,000 species of butterflies in the world!
10 tips for welcoming these lovely creatures into your world:
For a bonus, here is tip number 11:
Have you caught Butterfly Fever? What a wonderful thing! Enjoy these butterfly activities or just learn more:
(Note: The above links are to posts in a subscribers-only forum.)
No joke? For those of you that love trivia, I found the following tidbits on Widipedia1:
********************************** Thanks for reading. I hope you've enjoyed this article. Rest your mouse over any of the pictures for more information. Three additional articles: Where are all the Butterflies? Butterfly Populations in the United States by Marna Towne (Mrs_Ed) Metamorphosis of a School Butterfly Garden by Angela Carson (Bookerc 1) Butterfly Snowbirds by Kelli Kallenborn (Kelli) ********************************** Kelli, three gardeners and Mrs_Ed: May you all be blessed with beautiful butterflies in 2009! Thank you so much for sharing your pictures for this article. (The thumbnail picture is from Mrs_Ed's collection also). All pictures on this article shall not be used without permission from copyright owner.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly
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