Plenty of Butterflies

[Anne Kilmer]

April is Butterfly Month

In Florida, from tip to top, April is still a great planting month; a 
month to put in a new garden or spiff up an old one.
Many butterflies are flying; larval hosts are fresh and juicy and it's 
the perfect time to lay eggs and to be a caterpillar.
April is also a month when people are focused on the environment. 
There's Naturescape, Earth Day, in many states there's Arbor Day, and 
it's a fine time to visit parks, help schools with their plantings, and 
plan for the summer's growth.
Children are still in school, and there is time for their hard work in 
the garden to be rewarded by the school year's end. Plants planted in 
April are well established by June when their gardeners leave for the 
summer.
Therefore, April would be the perfect month to celebrate butterflies.

Butterflies migrate. Our April butterflies may show up in Saskatchewan 
in July, and their grandchildren may return to us in October. What we 
give is what we get.

Special celebrations:

Plant a new butterfly garden at your neighborhood school, recreation 
center, library, hospital, church or nursing home. Or replant an old 
neglected garden, with careful attention to the current residents. You 
don't want to pull up larval hosts by mistake.

Sponsor a butterfly garden contest in your community.

Survey your neighborhood for rare butterflies and/or suitable habitat, 
host plants etc.

Let's have a statewide school contest, and the winners will be chosen 
because of the number and variety of their butterflies,  rather than the 
tidiness of their garden. Special attention will be given to 
record-keeping, number of rare butterflies provided for, ancillary lab 
facilities provided ...
And we can use the good gardens for neighborhood study and release 
sites, where appropriate. Use the Internet to find the gardens that 
would interest us, why don't we.

In July, when NABA does the butterfly count, we can see how much these 
activities have increased the count for species in need of help. And 
then, in 2004, the results really start to show.


 
 ------------------------------------------------------------ 

   For subscription and related information about LEPS-L visit:

   http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/lepsl