My Butterfly Habitat in South Florida

A co-worker got me interested in butterflies. I live outside of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida She lives in Miami. Nancy and her mom both have butterfly gardens, although her mother is more passionate about it than Nancy. Nancy said her mom has so many butterflies in her garden that she has to shoo them away when she is gardening. They are always looking for new plants to attract new butterflies.

I bought a parsley that had 6 beautiful swallowtail caterpillars on it, but one day they all disappeared. I have a ton of lizards that live on my patio, so I am not sure if the lizards got the caterpillars.Possibly they put their crysalis' where I couldn't find them and they hatched and I just missed everything. I wish I had purchased my habitat at that time. This way it would have protected them from the lizards and I would been able to see them when they hatched out of the crysalis'.

After talking to Nancy I decided to focus on monarchs to get started. They feed on milk weed, which is easy to find and not that expensive. A plant that a butterfly will lay its eggs on is called a host plant. Milk week are poisonous. Because the caterpillars eat the milkweek, they are toxic too to their predators. Even if they do not die after eating a monarch caterpillar, they will be very sick. Birds and lizards recognize the coloring of the monarch and know not to eat it. All nurseries would have carry milk weed, and Home Depot has them most of the time. I haven't seen them very often in garden centers at places like Target or Wal-Mart. The main problem with the plants is that the caterpillars are voracious eaters and I've gone to the nursery near my house and the caterpillars have eaten every single plant they have there. They will usually cut them back and wait for new leaves to grow back. So, there have been times, when I have had to run around to 2-3 different places before I found a good plant. 1-2 caterpillars can annihilate a whole plant. I've run around panicking a few times when I've had as many as 30 caterpillars and they have eaten all 10-12 of my plants. You wouldn't think watching caterpillars would be interesting, but they are. I see how the smaller caterpillars get out of the way of the big caterpillars, who are bullies. I've seen two caterpillars having a little confrontation when they end up on the same leaf at the same time. Its fun just watching them munch away on a leaf. They generally lie upside down underneath the leaf . They are very methodical about eating a leaf so they get every bit of it. They will start at the tip of the leaf, eating across and backwards towards the stem. Before I got my habitat, it was hit or miss to see whether or not I got to see my new butterflies. You have to be a detective to find a crysalis. The caterpillars will look for little nooks and crannies that are safe. On my patio, it was usually the lip of a planter. It was frustrating not getting to see the whole process so I bought a butterfly habitat. You can make your own, but when you can buy one for $14-15 (without the butterflies), to me it wasn't worth it. I got mine from www.amazingbutterflies.com. They have one they call a butterfly garden for around $22.00 and one that they call a pavillion for $32.00. To get started, I would just go to a nursery and look over the milk weed plants. Pick up each one, hold it up in the air and look under the leaves. You can almost always find a plant that has caterpillars on it. If you do, just be careful bringing it home.