Botanica’s Butterfly House turns 25 with celebration, release
On a recent afternoon, Kate Baker, the gardener in charge of Botanica’s Butterfly House for the past five years, had to coax a few of the half-dozen or more newly hatched butterflies out of the hatching station display to freedom.
She gently touched the ones still clinging to the end of their hard-shelled chrysalises and to the opened framed-plexiglass door to get them to fly out into the 2,800-square-foot, net-covered Butterfly House, which first opened in 1998.
One collided with the forehead of a visitor peering into the station, momentarily impeding its flight.
On Saturday, June 3, visitors can help release even more butterflies as part of Botanica’s annual butterfly release activity. Twenty butterflies will be released every half-hour between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Preregistration for timed tickets, which are an $8 add-on cost to admission, is required and some sessions have already sold out.
Several other activities are planned for that day on Botanica’s main meadow from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. as the botanical garden celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Butterfly House. The Flint Hills Fairies troupe, the Riverside Music Together center and local butterfly farmer Ryan Malone will be there, along with a photo booth, craft-making stations and educational activities. Those activities are included in the regular Botanica admission.
Malone, who runs the Hatchery Butterfly Farm in his backyard in the Riverside area, is supplying most of the live butterflies for Saturday’s release. He started raising butterflies in 2019 when he was working as a gardener at Botanica and now is one of the regular suppliers for Botanica. This year he became vice president of the International Butterfly Breeders Association.
Because the Butterfly House is a controlled environment —kept relatively free from predators like wasps and ants and providing plenty of nectar-rich plants like lantana and penta — Botanica’s indoor butterflies can live a little longer than the normal two- or three-week lifespan. Botanica brings in about 150 to 300 chrysalises every week to keep the Butterfly House populated with insects from late May to August. Besides Malone’s farm in Wichita, farms in Florida also supply Botanica with the pupas.
“They are shipped overnight by FedEx, and I have to drop whatever I’m doing in the gardens and immediately get them to start getting them out of the box. I glue their little bottoms to tissue paper and that’s how I pin them up,” Baker said, pointing to the chrysalises that were dangling from rods within the hatching station.
Displayed at the back of the Butterfly House, the hatching station is one of the features that separates Botanica’s Butterfly House from others found elsewhere, according to Baker and Botanica’s community engagement coordinator Nikki Smith.
It’s unusual for people to be able to see that hatching process because at other places they are kept in back or isolated areas, but here at Botanica you get to watch the hatching process,” Smith said.
“And you can see the variety,” added Baker, as she pointed out some of the differences among the chrysalises.
The pale green-colored pupas of the orange-barred sulfur butterflies were among the larger ones displayed. They hung right next to the similar-colored but smaller chrysalises of the monarch butterfly.
Green and blue pupas of malachite butterflies were hanging on the next row. Other species on display that afternoon included the zebra longwing, the spicebush swallowtail, Julia and the great Southern white.
Nearly all the species that visitors see in the Butterfly House are native to Kansas, but the malachites are an example of a tropical butterfly usually found throughout Central and northern South America.
The USDA, which regulates the type of butterflies that can be displayed, allows non-native butterflies if it can be proven that a species was spotted at least once within Sedgwick County.
“So, at some point, a storm happened and pushed them off course” to bring them to Kansas, Baker explained.
At any given time, about 24 species can be found flying around the enclosure, she said.
Visitors can also find more butterflies in the gardens outside the Butterfly House and leading up to a butterfly garden that was established in 1992 since gardeners have planted plenty of pollinator plants, like milkweed that monarch butterflies favor and salvia, along that stretch.
“They did such a good job last year that the native butterflies swarmed so much and there were tons of caterpillars in these beds … so the gardening work here supports not just the butterflies inside the house but the native monarchs as well,” Smith said.
Botanica’s Butterfly House 25th anniversary celebration
What: celebration of the popular feature includes entertainment, a photo booth, crafting stations and educational activities on the main meadow and a ticketed live butterfly release inside the Butterfly House
When: 11 a.m.-4 p.m., with the last butterfly release happening at 2:30 p.m., Saturday, June 3. Regular hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Where: Botanica, 701 Amidon
Admission: $10 for ages 13 and older; $8 for ages 3-12 and 65 and older; free for children 2 and younger, active duty and retired military, and Botanica members. Tickets for the live butterfly release are an $8 add-on, with preregistration required; some sessions have already sold out.
Budget tip: Kansas families with kids in pre-K through 12th grade can visit for free by using a one-time pass available through the Sunflower Summer app, which is funded through the state’s education department. The program allows up to two accompanying adults to visit for free too. The program runs through Aug. 13 or until funding runs out.
More info: 316-264-0448 or botanica.org
This story was originally published June 2, 2023 at 6:21 AM.