Tropical butterflies
Introduction to the life of a Butterfly from butterfly egg to adult butterfly


Advertise on this site

Free Philippine
wallpapers

Different butterflies live peacefully together and feed on same flowers from delicious nectar offered by flowers. Nectar from flowers is nothing else but love from flowers to nature and mankind. To be used, absorbed and enjoyed.

A brief introduction to the life cycles of butterflies with information and photos taken at the private operated butterfly garden on Boracay island - Bulabog Beach - Philippines

If you love flowers then you may also love butterflies as both are very similar - both are loving beings living in a friendly symbiosis together. Butterflies are like small baby angels and if you are lucky they start soon to feed out of your hands.

The life of a butterfly is as magic as the life-cycle of a human being. Starting the life in as an egg, then larva or caterpillar - feeding on his preferred food plant and then turns into a pupa to become a butterfly, feeding on nectar only - nectar is love produced by flowers as a gift to nature or mankind.

Attracting butterflies into your garden is easy - making them stay and reproduce in your garden is easy as well - all you need is some basic knowledge as given here to fully understand the life cycle of butterflies and thus to understand the different needs during the different phases of life forms a butterfly has from egg to butterfly.

Butterflies need larva food plants and nectar plants - if you offer both then you can host a variety of butterflies in your own garden. Make your butterfly gardening easy - select local flowers and local food plant species. In any country that has native butterflies you will find an abundance of local food plants and nectar producing flowers. In addition you may add a few successfully grown imported food plants. When viewing pictures about butterfly plants - compare all the plant and flower / food plants listed to your local gardens in your neighborhood. Select those who grow strong and naturally in your climate rather than importing delicate and fragile exotic butterflies attracting/feeding plants and flowers.

Basic steps of a butterfly life cycle

Butterflies love flowers - wild flowers free of any fertilizer, free of herbicide and free of pesticide. Jungle-like ... a peace of wild grass with all mixed wild flowers in your garden is an excellent starting-point for a private butterfly garden. Several groups of wild blossoming flowers all around your property will attract a number of different butterflies. Each butterfly variety has a preferred nectar flower and a preferred food plant. The food plant of bush a butterfly mother loves to put her eggs down. Later as the eggs hatch and pupa or caterpillars result. These caterpillars are hungry and feed on that particular food plant - hence its name food-plant. It serves as food for caterpillars. Be generous - plant many food-plants and let them eat as much as they need. The reward will be many colorful butterflies in your garden later on.

A few years ago I planted some 100+ sunflowers in my tropical garden and after a while I saw each morning about half of a sunflower-plant eaten up ... in a single night. Many nights = many sunflower plants gone and many more sunflower plants left to blossom ! This shall show you that a caterpillar needs quantities of food plants. If you want to enjoy nature - be generous to nature .. you will be rewarded manifold, like in real life as well.

Depending on climate you will have your specific butterflies in your neighborhood and thus need particular food plants for those butterflies. Look around what kind of vegetable are most eaten up by caterpillars - and plant them somewhere in your garden or a corner of your garden, ... just for your butterfly garden. Look what kind of flowers in your climate zone are most visited by various butterflies. Go to a botanical garden or flower park to see what artificial flowers are most often visited during the different seasons of a year. Also look at wild fields and see what kind of flowers are preferred as the natural resource by your local butterfly species. Then plant groups of such blossoming flowers and bushes in your garden to offer an abundance of nectar to attract all butterflies of your local area into your garden.

I remember in the mid nineties a butterfly bush in Germany being visited by some 100+ butterflies - all of the same butterfly species - at once. Butterflies are in no way limited to tropical countries but can be enjoyed in colder zones all around the world as well.

Butterflies making love

Butterfly girls are like human girls - before they say YES they often run ( fly ) away from the loved one. So do the butterfly girls. The poor butterfly husband has to chase the girl long before mating. Once he is "inside" - the butterfly girl apparently enjoys sex like human girls to - once he is inside her, she never attempts to fly away until mating is successfully and peacefully finished.

Above picture shows a typical butterfly mating position. The result is an average of 100-200 eggs - up to 1000 eggs.

Butterfly eggs

If you have food-plants in your garden - look for eggs on the plants

Above picture shows a small egg - the white dot - on the lower side of a leave

Collect butterfly eggs for hatching in a protected environment to have a greater number of butterflies to share with nature and your friends. Butterfly eggs can be hatched in a protected corner of your garden to keep predators away from the eggs and from the caterpillars as well. The typical daily work of a butterfly garden-angel is to look for eggs on leaves of typical butterfly food-plants and collect them ... also look out for caterpillars - then bring them into a protected hatching and feeding area until they turn into pupa.

In return for growing your butterflies release 10-20% of all butterflies into freedom.

Butterfly eggs turn into caterpillars or larva

In a butterfly garden you may actually feed your caterpillars with the leaves of their preferred food plant rather than letting them feed on wild plants.

Caterpillars are HUNGRY - the eat and eat - to multiply their body weight by approximately 100 times within a few weeks. The droplets the caterpillar leave behind can be used as valuable natural fertilizer for your house-plants.

The purpose of collecting eggs and caterpillar is two-fold: You protect your garden of being eaten up by large numbers of caterpillars and you also avoid your caterpillars being eaten up by birds and other predators living on butterfly eggs and butterfly caterpillars. In a protected hatching environment you can feed them as much as they are hungry without losing most of them like you would in wild nature and while protecting your garden at the same time.

After a while being caterpillar eating like carnivores on fleshy plants and leaves, the caterpillars then turn into pupa for several days. The Butterfly state of pupa is nothing else but a state of deep meditation resulting in a total transformation from a plant eating caterpillar to a nectar eating, angel like being. The pupa stage transforms behavior and form of the original being - a full transformation in behavior and look like a re-materialization. Exactly as the transformation of a highly spiritual human will experience when ready to become one with God as a result of conscious spiritual progress and maturity.

In above photo we see a "pupa station" in Boracay's butterfly garden. Many pupa go thru the transition from caterpillar to becoming their real purpose - a beautiful colorful nectar absorbing butterfly

We have again a similarity to human life cycle development. We humans too start our physical being as egg, then turn into mostly carnivores to eat flesh or other living beings such as plants, salads, vegetables, etc - all living beings from the absolute point of view !! - later in our final steps of spiritual development we too go into a state similar to the pupa ... we meditate and then go thru a special samadhi to turn into beings of love living for the remainder of eternity but from love and light.

Nature can teach us many most valuable lessons - for example WHY do girls first have to run away if later on they enjoy being loved anyway. Learn to say YES from the beginning and an even greater joy of life may result for all. God created nature for our own enjoyment, fun and for teaching us as well.