Butterflies at the Botanical Gardens

All winter, for the last few years, Tucson Botanical Gardens has had a special butterfly exhibit. This is a ‘live’ show of tropical butterflies hatched in an on site incubator. These insects live and die in the glass house maybe 20x50ft and made to feel really hot and humid inside. They’re fed a kind of sugar water and fruit as the plants in the greenhouse are not species they can eat. They’re not allowed to escape (by law) and when they die, they’re frozen for three days (just to make sure). Now that all sounds kind of cruel but it isn’t – these butterflies aren’t native to Arizona and it would be wrong to introduce them to the desert. Evidently in the tropical countries they come from there is a big industry in breeding caterpillars, in the wild, for this kind of exhibit; which is keeping large amounts of rainforest from being cut down for the beef industry.
The heat and humidity in the butterfly house was similar to the experience at the Eden Project in Cornwall. It felt very authentic, like you were in another place; there was even a small CD player on the floor piping out tropical bird song.
We were told, as we entered through the two door system, to keep an eye on the floor too as it was easy to tread on one of the beauties. And as we left we were checked thoroughly for stow-a-ways.
Inside, it was like a Victorian English orangery. There was a small stone fish pond in the middle, windows all around, a glass roof and creeping, leafy plants up the walls. The butterflies were everywhere, hanging on the walls, doors, the plants and trees and the air was full of them flying. They ranges from very small 1 inch across to some, like those Sadie is looking at, which had a 6 inch wingspan and were a wonderful electric blue in flight. I had one land on my leg and Sadie had one on her shirt, one lady seemed to be wearing a huge butterfly earring. The incubation room could only be viewed from a window, but looked like a scene from a science fiction film, in miniature, with all of these cocoons hanging from the ceiling in rows waiting to hatch. Occasionally on of the sacks, often looking camouflaged like leaves, would twitch with life. For the whole time we were there a half butterfly was emerging from it’s chrysalis but never got out, and I wondered if it ever would.