A Florida Butterfly Christmas Tree

As part of our holiday decorations, this year we've added a Florida butterfly themed Christmas tree in the BioWorks classroom. The classroom is a peaceful place to sit and enjoy the Flight Encounter through a full wall of windows during times when the Encounter isn't open to the public. It also contains an easy-to-use microscope for looking at butterfly wings up close, and an informative slide show presentation about the exhibit.

Our artificial tree was kindly donated by friend-of-the-garden and MOSI member Erin Miles and her family. We decorated it with real and artificial flowers, gingham ribbon, and full-color laminated photos of Florida's butterflies, moths, and caterpillars. The photos are all from the great book Florida's Fabulous Butterflies (we happened to have a spare fairly beat-up copy we were willing to sacrifice) and while you might not want them on your tree at home, they're perfect for a high-traffic area like our exhibit.

We wanted to include some real flowers on our tree, so we used some mini-vase ornaments that MOSI staffer Jill had created for another project (get the DIY instructions here). We have red pentas, white angelonia, red dianthus, and red jatropha flowers on the tree this week - we may change them as the season continues. We also have some little terra cotta pots with artificial poinsettia flowers in them.

It's been a lot of fun decorating the exhibit for the holidays, and guests have been very complimentary. We hope you'll stop by to say "Happy Holidays" to the butterflies (and their keepers) if you're in the area!