Volunteering with the bugs!

Do you live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida? Enjoy butterflies and gardening? Have a little spare time on your hands and thing volunteering might be for you? Check out these two main types of volunteers for the BioWorks Butterfly Garden @ MOSI and see if either has some appeal to you!

Butterfly Docent: Minimum age for volunteering in this position is 14. With provided training docents should be able to talk to guests and explain general themes of butterflies and butterfly gardening as well as make sure that guests do not touch the butterflies and plants. Some light cleaning and gardening to help keep the butterfly garden and grounds in shape is expected. Butterfly Docents generally stay inside the Flight Encounter so that it can have longer open hours for museum guests. Once trained, Butterfly Docents may work any day of the week. In the event of inclement weather, Butterfly Docents will be responsible for politely ushering guests out of the Flight Encounter and securing the butterfly garden enclosure for the duration of the storm. The Butterfly Garden @ MOSI is not open during lightning storms and reopens no earlier than 15 minutes after inclement weather has passed.

Butterfly Garden Assistant: Minimum age for volunteering for this position is 18. Butterfly Garden Assistants will be involved in the day to day upkeep of the butterfly rearing program and garden grounds. This may include several hours per shift outside in the elements. Light to heavy weeding may be requested as well as some small housekeeping tasks like sweeping of sidewalks or cleaning up an area to improve its appeal to guests. Insect collection and feeding is required in this position and volunteers must be comfortable handling non-poisonous insects. Butterfly Garden Volunteers are encouraged to be highly independent and able to assess concerns or lab needs and deal with them on a basis of priority. As a volunteer you will be encouraged to drastically increase your knowledge of plants, butterflies and gardening in general.

See something you like? Drop me an email and lets get talking about volunteering with the bugs.

Fort Matanzas Red Cedar and a Settler's Garden

The Historic Tree Grove at MOSI offers a unique timeline of America's history as it was viewed by silent witnesses, trees. Our 17 trees planted in the grove in 1996 are all seedlings of trees that witnessed amazing historic events or were associated with famous historical people. Imagine the sycamore that grew from seeds that went to the moon, a pine that watched a battle of the American Civil War, the sweet gum that saw the flight of the first airplane. What wonders those trees witnessed and those same trees still live long after the events of history have passed. We can still lay our hands on their bark, sit beneath their boughs and take a few minutes out to learn and converse about great deeds and fantastic people which shaped our world.

The tree first on the timeline in the Historic Tree Grove is the Fort Matanzas Red Cedar, a tree that watched as Florida was settled and tamed.

Fort Matanzas
245 French Huguenots were stranded in an inlet just south of the new village of St Augustine and were massacred among the dunes by Spanish forces led by Menendez in 1565. The inlet was named Matanzas which is the Spanish term for “slaughter”. This incident initiated Spanish control of Florida for some 235 years. Long the site of wooden watchtowers, Ft Matanzas began construction in 1740 to guard access to this unprotected inlet that could allow pirates or foreign forces to reach the now well established city of St Augustine.

The Fort at Matanzas still stands on Rattlesnake Island amidst a lush preserve of barrier island ecosystem. The preserve boardwalk is a great walk if you are ever in the St Augustine area and there are some great bits of nature just waiting to be visited and photographed. (My better half snapped some great shots of purple spiderwort flowers growing along a path there!)

Fort Matanzas is host to many live oaks of over 150 years of age and also boasts a red cedar tree that is over 260 years old. Our red cedar is a seedling from that amazing tree at Ft Matanzas.

Learn more about Ft Matanzas at the National Park Service website

Next time you are at MOSI, drop by the Historic Tree Grove and take a few minutes out to wonder: What would it have been to live in wild Florida in those early years of settlement? War, piracy, wild life threats, poorly growing crops, famine, hurricanes and fear of attack were constant themes in the ever changing and politically charged landscape of the early centuries of Florida's inhabiting by non-native settlers. To settle on this peninsula even now is to accept an entirely different set of plants and animals and a climate like no other in this country. Imagine Florida before air conditioning, refrigeration and modern travel.


The Fort Matanzas Red Cedar is a very tall, conical evergreen tree that stands at the entrance to the Historic Tree Grove.

For my butterfly enthusiasts, Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is a host plant for the Sweedner's Hairstreak butterfly. You knew I would sneak a butterfly in here somewhere!

A Garden for Settlers

To capture part of the importance of Ft. Matanzas and the St. Augustine area, we chose to plant a garden of Florida native plants that would have been useful to early settlers. During day 2 of the Fiskars Project Orange thumb planting we installed this lovely garden at the foot of a gorgeous red cedar tree.

• Wild Coffee (Psychotria nervosa) is a shiny and textured-leafed plant with bright red berries. It has been reported that early Florida settlers used this plant to make a substitue type of coffee drink.


• Coontie (Zamia) has a fern-like appearance and is a living fossil plant native to Florida. Also known as Indian Breadroot, the starchy tuber of this plant is poisonous if not properly prepared but can be used to produce a type of flour that was used by Native Americans and Florida Pioneers.


• Blanket Flower (Gaillardia puchella) is a Florida native wildflower that thrives in the sandy soils of the peninsula. Blanket flower was an easy and beautiful garden flower of early settlers planted around homes to ward of malaria.


• Beach Sunflower (Helianthus debilis) is another Florida native wildflower and member of the sunflower family also planted around settlers homes.

In the future I'd like to add some tobacco, cotton, sunchoke and datil peppers (as a nod to the Minorcans)

Photo credits for Ft. Matanzas: L. Chandler -- NPS Photo

Butterfly Taxonomy

So where do butterflies belong within the ranks of all living things on our planet?

To answer this question will require an article that includes a great deal of science content. Be not afraid and go fourth ready to learn something new. Some of these words you may remember from biology class, but some may be entirely new to you. Although it may not be the most exciting article of all time, it will certainly prove an excellent party trick if you can manage to memorize all the information below.

Taxonomy and You: Where does stuff fit in?

Scientists use a system called taxonomy to classify living things according to similarities and common ancestry. The word taxonomy comes from the Greek words taxis (meaning 'order' or 'arrangement') and nomos ('law' or 'science').

Modern taxonomy was born from the work of Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) who began the task of classifying living things based on similar characteristics. Linnaeus also laid the groundwork for the system of binomial nomenclature or 'Latin name' which utilizes a genus and specific name or epithet to create a full scientific name for a creature. Binomial nomenclature gets us around the sticky problems of one species having many common names by providing a scientific term by which we will always know which species is being referenced.

Modern taxonomy has been greatly expanded from the days of Linnaeus and now uses DNA sequences to help classify animals along the Darwinian theory of universal common descent. Upon this theory is built our modern tree classification system that traces back individual species through increasingly larger groups that return to a single common ancestor now believed to have lived some 3.9 million years ago.

Butterfly Taxonomy: A big mess of bugs put into their places.

So with butterflies, let is begin at the top, with the Kingdom Animalia.

Kingdom Animalia

The Kingdom Animalia is made up of mostly multi-cellular Eukaryotic organisms (those with complex cell structures contained within membranes) with a body plan that becomes fixed as they develop. Most Animalia are motile or can move independently and spontaneously and are heterotrophs or can ingest other organisms for sustenance.

Phylum Arthropoda

Arthropods are invertebrates that possess an exoskeleton (or external skeleton), segmented bodies and jointed appendages. The term Arthropod comes from the Greek for 'jointed-foot'. This Phylum includes insects, arachnids (spiders) and also crustaceans (crabs and lobsters).

Class Insecta

The Class Insecta includes all insects having a three part body (head, abdomen and thorax) and three pairs of jointed legs (six total legs). Insects represent some half of all known living organisms and the number of individual species is numbered somewhere between six and ten million.

Subclass Pterygota

This Subclass includes all insects that have wings. The Pterygota subclass also includes all insects who had winged ancestors even if they no longer possess wings.

Infraclass Neoptera

This infraclass includes all winged insects that are able to flex their wings over their abdomens

Superorder Endopterygota

Also known as Holometabola, the Super Order Endopterygota are insects that go through a four-part life-cycle consisting of egg, larval, pupal and adult stages. Members of this Superorder also undergo a radical or complete metamorphosis that separates their larvae and adult stages.

Order Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is the Order of insects that inclueds both butterflies and moths and the word Lepidoptera derives from the ancient Greek for 'scaled wing'. Other orders of the Class Insecta include Hymenoptera (ants, sawflies, wasps and bees), Diptera (flies) and Coleoptera (beetles). There are about 180,000 species in this order that are divided into 47 superfamilies and 128 families.

Suborder Glossata

The Suborder of Glossata refers to all butterflies and moths that have a coilable proboscis which is the feeding tube or tongue-like device that these insects use to sip nectar. The opposite Suborder Agathiphaga contains just 2 known species and are considered one of the most primitive living lineages of moths.

Rhopalocera (unranked)

Rhopalocera ('club-antenna') and Heterocera ('varied-antenna') are non-standard divisions used in the taxonomy of Lepidopterans to formally distinguish moths from butterflies. From this point on in the taxonomy of butterflies we move into the three superfamilies Papilionoidea, Hesperioidea and Hedyloidea. These three superfamilies form a clade which is a group of organisms that are all believed to descend from a common ancestor.

Superfamily Papilionoidea: The True Butterflies (5 families)

Papilionoidea are the first of the three superfamilies of butterflies. This superfamily contains most of what you would easily recognize as butterflies like the Monarch and various Swallowtail butterflies. These butterflies distinguished by their slim bodies, club shaped antenna and 4 wings that move independently of each other.

Family Papilionidae: Swallowtails and Birdwings

Family Pieridae: Whites and Sulphers

Family Lycaenidae: Blues and Coppers

Family Riodinidae: Metalmarks

Family Nymphalidae: Brush Footed Butterflies (13 subfamilies)

• Subfamily Libytheinae: Snout Butterflies
• Subfamily Danainae: Milkweed Butterflies
• Subfamily Tellervinae:
• Subfamily Ithomiinae: Glasswings
• Subfamily Calinaginae: Calinagas
• Subfamily Morphinae: Morphos and Owls
• Subfamily Satyrinae: Browns and Satyrs
• Subfamily Charaxine: Leaf Butterflies
• Subfamily Biblidinae: Tropical brushfoots
• Subfamily Apaturinae: Emperors
• Subfamily Nymphalinae: Nymphs
• Subfamily Limenitidinae: Adelphas
• Subfamily Heliconiinae: Tropical Longwings

Superfamily Hesperioidea: Skippers (about 3500 species)

A Sister superfamily to the True Butterflies, Skippers are usually smaller in size with robust, hairy bodies more similar to that of a moth. The antenna of Skippers have a backward hooked club shape that resembles the end of a crochet hook. There are about 3500 species in the Skipper superfamily.

Family Hesperidae (7 subfamilies)

• Subfamily Coeliadinae: Awls, Awlets and Policemen (about 75 species)
• Subfamily Hesperiinae: Grass Skippers (over 2000 species)
• Subfamily Heteropterinae: Skipperlings (about 150 species)
• Subfamily Megathyminae: Giant Skippers (about 18 species)
• Subfamily Pyrginae: Spread-winged Skippers ( about 1000 species)
• Subfamily Pyrrhopyginae: Firetips (about 150 species)
• Subfamily Trapezitinae: Australian Skippers (about 60 species)
  

Superfamily Hedyloidea: The "American Moth Butterflies"

These butterflies were first treated as a tribe of the Geometridea moths named Oenochrominae, the "Hedylicae". Native to Central and South America, members of this neotropical superfamily are also found on several islands of the the Caribbean such as Jamaica, Cuba and Trinidad. Although the first species were described in the early 19th century it was not until 1986 that a shift began in scientific thinking that led this group to be reclassified in 1995 as a sister superfamily to the True Butterflies. Hedyloids have an antenna that is similar to that of a moth and some of the species are even night flying.

Family: Hedylidae

Genus: Macrosoma (about 35 species)

Plantain

Another fine case of a common weed being beloved by butterflies. Plantain (Plantago lanceolata) is one of about 200 species of inconspicuous grass like plants common to disturbed areas like roadsides and yards.

Plantain is the host to the lovely Buckeye Butterfly (Junonia coenia) which is common to the Tampa Bay region of Florida. The caterpillars are charcoal grey to black and covered in tiny non-stinging spines.

Since prehistoric times plantagos have been used in poultices to cure rashes from insect bites and poison ivy and also as a tincture to help heal coughs and bronchitis. Of no relation to the similarly named banana cousin, broad leaf plantain varieties have sometimes been used as a leaf vegetable in salads.

Purple Coneflower

Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is a drought tolerant and tough little wildflower

native to the Southeast and Midwest of North America.

This gorgeous butterfly nectar flower has sandpaper-like leaves and dies back each winter. In the spring I am always surprised my its reemergence from bare earth and its quick transition back to a blooming beauty.

Echinacea has been used for medicinal purposes for hundreds of years by Native Americans and can now be found in many modern products as well. Next time you look at a homeopathic cold remedy, check the ingredients. Odds are that you will find the name Echinacea somewhere on the label.

Purple Coneflowers are used in clumps throughout the MOSI gardens and can especially be found in the medicinal garden under the Clara Barton Red Bud tree in the Historic Tree Grove.

Wild Lime

Wild Lime (Zanthoxylum fagara) also known as Cat's Claw for its claw-like thorns is a fantastic host plant for Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) larvae, if you own a pair of leather gloves. Handling this plant will leave you frowning unless you use some caution. When the leaves are crushed they emit a lime-like aroma. Some people have reported skin irritation from the handling of this plant, so once again, please use caution.

Wild Lime is a Florida native plant with bright green alternate leaves that blooms with tiny yellow flowers in the spring. In the fall, small fleshy fruits mature to a showy black color. Wild Lime is wonderfully drought tolerant once established and should require no further watering.

Wild Lime is also closely related to another neat Florida native tree, the Hercules Club also known as the Toothache Tree.

Sleepy Orange

Sleepy Orange (Eurema nicippe) is a diminutive and abundant Florida butterfly in the sulphur family. The adults are brilliant orange-yellow with black margins on their wing edges and a black eyespot on their forewing. These tiny butterflies can often be found in the margins of roadways along with several of the grass skippers, Phaon crescents and Checkered White butterflies.

The larvae host on various members of the Cassia family but the ones onsite at MOSI seem to prefer Candlestick Cassias (Cassia alata), Sicklepod Cassias (Cassia obtusifolia) and Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata). The larvae are easily distinguished from other sulphur caterpillars by their pale green color, tiny hairs and the white racing stripe that runs the length of their bodies.

The members of this species spend their winters as adult butterflies by using warmer days to find food and hibernating on cooler days. The mottled underside of their wings provides excellent camouflage and these butterflies are very hard to spot when sitting still.

Tropical Checkerspot

The Tropical Checkerspot also known as the Tropical Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus oileus) is a diminutive butterfly that is quite striking in color and patten if you can manage to sneak up close enough to get a good look. Fortunately, this particular skipper was quite compliant as he sunned himself on a brick pathway moments after the rain had stopped.

Eggs are laid singly on the top sides of leaves of their host plants. As larvae, the caterpillars will host on several species of the Mallow family including hollyhocks and mallows. The larvae spin tiny amounts of silk when they feed creating a small web around the leaf upon which they are feeding. This helps to provide additional protection from predators.

This particular butterfly is a male Checkerspot. Males of this species have silvery blue hairs on their bodies and large patches of white on their wings. Females are darker in color showing more brown patches on their wings and have darker colored bodies.

Imperial Moth

This gorgeous Imperial Moth (Eacles imperialis)was dropped off at the gardens today by a coworker who found this awesome moth hanging out on our loading dock.

Imperial moths are members of the Saturniidae family of moths to which also belongs the giant silk moths. The larvae of this moth grow to a rather remarkable 4 inches in length and in their brown form resemble a hot dog with horns. In their green form, they are just kinda freaky!

When the larvae have reached full size, they burrow into the ground to pupate. Adults emerge once a year and begin searching for a mate. Females call out to males by emitting pheramones that the male moths can detect up to a mile away from a female. Once mated, the female can lay up to 200 eggs. As adults, the moths do not eat. Instead they subsist entirely on nutrients that they consumed as larvae which gives them a reduced lifespan of about one week.

The large dark patches on the fore-wing indicate that this moth is likely a male. Females of this species are generally a bit larger in size and more yellow in color. As I have no females for this particular moth to spend quality time with, I will release him into the wild this afternoon so that he may continue his search, perhaps flying several miles in just one night looking for a mate. That's dedication!

Check out some really amazing pictures of Imperial Moth larvae in this scrapblog I made last year. The photos of the caterpillars were taken by MOSI alumni TJ Couch here in the BioWorks Butterfly Garden at MOSI.

Hairy Pod Cowpea

Hairy Pod Cowpea (Vigna luteola) is native throughout most of the southeast United States, including Florida. This drought tolerant vine can take full sun and is a fast grower, quickly reaching a height of 6 feet or more.

The Dorantes Skipper (Urbanus dorantes), the Long-Tailed Skipper (Urbanus proteus) and Grey Hairstreak (Strymon melinus) butterflies of Florida all use this plant as a larval host.

The genus is named for the 17th century Italian botanist and physician Dominico Vigna (1577-1647) who was a professor of botany in Pisa. Vigna wrote an important commentary on the botanical works of Greek botanist Theophrastus Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants. The species name, luteola, means "yellow" which is why this plant is also commonly called Yellow Vigna.

Orange Barred Giant Sulphur

Orange-barred Giant Sulphur (Phoebis philea) is a large and striking yellow butterfly with patches of bright orange on the topsides of its wings. A fast-flying butterfly, the members of this species are best to be viewed and their many frequent nectaring spots.

Females lay elongated spindle-shaped eggs on sennas especially Candlestick Cassias (Cassia alata), Sicklepod Cassias (Cassia obtusifolia) and Christmas Cassias (Cassia bicapsularis) in the Tampa Bay area.

Caterpillars are green with lateral bands of black with yellow below and the larvae have black dots and hairs. When the caterpillars consume the flowers of their senna hosts the caterpillars often appear as bright yellow in color rather than overall green.

The chrysalis of this species has a bowed shape with variable colors, generally greenish in appearance. The pupae strongly resembles the shape of an unopened leaf or seed pod. Shortly before emerging, the wing spots and anatomical structures of the developing butterfly become increasingly visible through the pupal skin. Often, the emergence of the butterfly can be predicted based upon the coloration of the chrysalis and the butterfly inside.

The adult butterfly will have a wingspan of 2 3/4-3 1/4" with males having darker orange patches than the females. In summer, females may appear considerably more white or pale yellow in color which is common among many species of sulphur butterflies. This species in common throughout Florida and Texas but may stray as far north as New York and Nebraska.

Ray Charles Live Oak and Sensory Garden on TV

TBO video featuring the Ray Charles Live Oak and Sensory Garden planted this past Earth Day as part of the Fiskar's Project Orange Thumb Planting. This video aired last night on Tampa Bay's Channel 10 News.

Watch the video here on the TBO website.

The Buckeye

The Buckeye Butterfly (Junonia coenia) is a real visual treat is you can manage to get close enough to take a long look.

This fast-flying brown butterfly has beautiful patches of burnt orange and gorgeous eyespots that help to protect them from predators. A flash of these eyespots is often enough to be recognized by a predators as "the big scary eyeball of something big enough to attack me!" which sends most birds or lizards off in search of something that doesn't stare back.

Females lay their small green eggs on the leaves of figworts and plantains, common yard weeds that help to keep this butterfly a common sight in the Tampa Bay area and the MOSI gardens.

Eastern Black Swallowtails

Eastern Black Swallowtails (Papilio polyxenes), commonly known as "those little monsters eating my herb garden!" are one of the most common butterflies found in the home gardens of the Tampa Bay area.

Although they start as tiny brown caterpillars, larvae quickly molt to a appear more white with black stripes and yellow dots. More mature caterpillars take on a pale green coloring instead of white. Larvae consume parsley, dill, fennel, rue celery, Queen Anne's Lace and carrot tops. Caterpillars can quickly defoliate these herbs, but the herbs will often flush back with new leaves after being denuded by many hungry caterpillars.


With a range north to Quebec, south to Florida and west to Colorado and Southern California they are a well known and common Swallowtail species throughout most of the United States.

The chrysalis of this species may be either brown or green in color and both are wonderfully camouflaged on their bright green host plants looking alternately like foliage or a small bit of wood or dead leaf.

Adult males have a wide band of yellow on their wings and females tend to have much less yellow and more blue coloration. It has been suggested that blue coloring on the females of the species serves to mimic the Pipevine Swallowtail which predators find distasteful. This ensures that females may have a longer lifespan in which to deposit their eggs on host plants.

Male Black Swallowtails can often be observed patrolling open fields and marshes, searching for a female of their species. These butterflies often have a wingspan measuring between 3 1/4 and 4 1/4 inches, making them a fairly large and easy to spot insect.

The next time you are out in the garden, take a peek at your kitchen herbs and look for these colorful larvae or even their eggs. Black Swallowtail eggs are tiny white globes that look a great deal like miniature pearls.