Site Planning for Butterfly Gardens
By:
Natural Resources Conservation ServicePeople find butterflies a joy to watch, their brightly colored wings catching the sunlight as they flutter purposefully, yet unpredictably, from flower to flower. Often children enjoy raising caterpillars as well as watching butterflies. Butterfly gardens offer great rewards for a relatively small amount of effort.
Butterflies have a fourstage life cycle beginning with three non-adult forms including egg, larva (caterpillar), and chrysalis (or chrysalid). A chrysalis is the form the caterpillar takes when it is pupating. (Pupation is the process of re-organizing a larval insect body into adult form). The fourth stage is the adult butterfly. The different life cycle stages of butterflies require different types of
habitat. Understanding the habitat components required for the different stages of a butterfly’s life cycle is important in designing butterfly gardens.
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