| Building a butterfly
garden as a science project in school would be a great
educational experience for all ages. Students will use
critical thinking skills, math skills and science skills
while building a butterfly garden. We dedicate time to
educate students about the importance and beauty of a
butterfly garden. These gardens can be a school wide
project or an individual classroom project. Regardless,
everyone will enjoy and learn from this project. Not
only will the students and teachers, alike, learn from this
experience, they will admire the beauty of the garden and
the monarch butterflies that will be attracted. The
most important element in creating a successful butterfly
garden is to provide both, nectar and host plants.
Nectar plants provide food for the
adult butterflies, and host plants provide food for the
caterpillars.
- Some common
nectar flowers are Zinnias, Mexican Sunflowers, Lantana,
Butterfly bush and Salvia.
- Some common
host plants are Milkweed for Monarchs, Parsley for Painted
Ladies and Anise for Swallowtail butterflies.
A
Little Information about the Milkweed Plant
- Milkweed plants usually grow about
2-6 feet in height.
- The leaves can grow from 2 to 10
inches long, and the top of the leaf is smooth, while the
bottom is hairy so that the monarch butterflies can lay
their eggs. These leaves contain toxins- poisonous
chemicals. These toxins don't hurt the caterpillar, but
they do make the caterpillar poisonous to most predators.
- Because it eats milkweed leaves as a
caterpillar, the monarch butterfly is also poisonous.
- The survival of the monarch
butterfly depends on this self-defense system provided by
the milkweed.
- The flowers on this plant are
actually a bunch of little flowers on the same stalk.
- Milkweed is the only plant that the
monarch caterpillar can eat.
Did You
Know???
·
Sap from milkweed was used by pioneers as a
cure for warts?
·
The airborne fluffy parachute of the seed was
used by Native Americans to insulate moccasins?
·
The dried empty seed pods were used as
Christmas tree decorations by early pioneers?
·
The boys and girls from Wisconsin schools
collected 283,000 bags of milkweed fluff for use in military
life jackets during World War II?
·
It is used as an indicator of ground-level
ozone air pollution?
 |
If you are
interested in building your own butterfly garden, or
would like to receive seeds for a school project,
please donate $2.00 or more (the more you
donate, the more seeds we can supply) to:
Amazing Butterflies-Seed Promotion
and we will send you seeds, with full
instructions,
so that you can begin to plant your very own
Monarch Butterfly Garden.
Instructions and
Release Brochure Included With With Your Seeds
Send your donation
and a self addressed,
stamped envelope to:
Amazing Butterflies –
Seed Promotion
PO Box 25852
Tamarac, FL 33320 |
|
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