Caterpillars are eating machines. If they could eat any plant they wanted, our Costa Rica biome would probably be reduced to twigs. Luckily, most butterflies are very host specific, and the caterpillars will only eat the leaves of a few select species of plants, often from just a single genus. We generally avoid planting any of the host plants of the butterflies that we keep. Occasionally I will discover that some species of butterfly has found a newly added plant as an acceptable host plant.

     Passion vine is the host plant of several species of longwing butterflies in our exhibit. For the past few weeks, there have been several passion vines placed on the learning cart in Costa Rica, so visitors are able to see the butterflies laying eggs. The passion vines attract dozens of butterflies and allow the visitors to really see them up close.

     You can also see how much damage the caterpillars do as they munch away all the leaves.  I had to start rotating passion vines onto the cart after the caterpillars completely defoliated the first couple of plants put out. If we were to breed our own butterflies, it would take a whole lot of greenhouse space simply devoted to growing host plants and would be much more costly. As it is, our butterfly pupas come from breeders in tropical countries. They are able to grow host plants much quicker and without the use of greenhouses.  

     The butterflies were so excited to start laying eggs on a fresh passion vine that I had put out, that one of them made a mistake and laid an egg right on my shirt.

- Nate Tschaenn

    One of the highlights of this year’s Orchid Mania show are the three arches stuffed with orchids surrounding the large bridge in the Costa Rica biome. As beautiful as the arches are you might be surprised at how inexpensive the structures them-selves were to put together sans orchids. The arches were built entirely in-house, and most of the materials were extra supplies that we had on hand. When facing a project big or small, it pays to be creative with the resources you already have.

    The main supports of the arches are six long pieces of rebar that were left over from some long forgotten project. The rebar was fairly easy to bend by hand into six halves of an arch. Attached to the rebar in a cylinder shape are lengths of vinyl coated wire fencing, also left over from past projects. The fencing is double wrapped in plastic deer fencing (left over from the construction of our chameleon enclosures) and stuffed with packing peanuts in order to support the orchids that will eventually be stuffed inside. Finally, surrounding the outside of the arches, stuffed between the deer fencing, is a thin layer of inexpensive and renewable long-fibered sphagnum.

On dark winter mornings it’s especially pleasant to start the day with a stroll through the glasshouses. The true spiny desert of Madagascar knows no winter equinox, away on the far side of the planet. The Madagascar plants in the E.A.Smith glasshouse do slow down during Cleveland’s winter, aided by an artifical “dry season” created when the Garden reduces watering for a few months. Some plants, like this Aloe deltoideodonta (above), are still in bloom. Although ice and sleet coat the glass a few inches away, bright-colored birds chirp and dart through the air, warm, dry and well-fed.

We’re warming the planet with our carbon burning activities, and everyday I see new evidence of that fact. For those of you who don’t believe that global climate change is happening, here’s yet another example of how animals are adapting to the warmer climate.

Last summer in Cleveland, I noticed a proliferation of a previously uncommon dark form variety of the female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). When I lived in Georgia for several years, this particular dark form was fairly common.  It was recorded that the dark forms were prevalent in the South and that the light forms were widespread (but more common north of Tennessee). Up until last summer I rarely, if ever, had seen a dark form female in Cleveland. Yet, here they were and not just a few of them. Almost every female Tiger Swallowtail was dark form. It’ll be interesting to see if last summer’s booming populations of dark female tiger swallowtails were just a coincidence or if they really are migrating northward due to warmer Cleveland summers. I suspect the latter. 

Posted by Cynthia Druckenbrod 

Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail dark form on top, male below

I love going into the Glasshouse in the winter, especially on sunny days, and seeing dozens of tropical butterflies flitting about. We’ve brought in some new species from Ecuador, and they are exquisitely beautiful! Speaking of butterflies, I receive a few calls every winter from families who have found moth cocoons or butterfly chrysalises or praying mantis egg cases on branches in their yards. Sometimes, they are attached to Christmas trees. When the cocoon, chrysalis or egg case is carried indoors to our warm houses during the winter, can you guess what happens? That’s right, the moth, butterfly or hundreds of praying mantises emerge at the wrong time of year! What can you do? You can bring it to the Garden and we’ll release it into the Glasshouse, where it’ll live out the rest of its life.  You could also attempt to feed the butterfly in captivity with a solution of 50/50 honey to water, which will help keep your butterfly alive for a few days. The challenge is that our houses are typically very dry in the winter and therefore not butterfly friendly, so don’t expect it to live for very long, unfortunately. If you bring in a moth cocoon and it hatches, it’s likely a silk moth. They don’t feed as adults and only live about week to breed and lay eggs before dying. For mantises, they would need live flies or other small insects to feed upon to survive in your house in the winter. My suggestion –  bring them to Garden if they hatch.  More importantly, thoroughly check the Christmas trees or branches you bring into your house in the winter so that nature can emerge when it is meant to emerge – in the spring.

Pictured above: Heliconius melpomene plesseni