The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Celebrating change
Experience what it’s like to transform from caterpillar to butterfly in interactive exhibit opening at Cleveland Botanical Garden
To many, butterflies are like living flowers — colorful, delicate and ethereal. As adult butterflies, they may only live for a few days, but it can take weeks to months for them to reach adulthood.
Despite their extraordinary beauty, it’s not easy being a butterfly.
That’s what kids and others will learn firsthand at “Amazing Butterflies,” a traveling exhibit at the Cleveland Botanical Garden with nearly a dozen interactive elements showcasing the life cycle of a butterfly as it transforms from caterpillar through chrysalis and into its lovely fluttering finale.
“Amazing Butterflies” opens March 23 and runs through April 28 — spring break season for many local students.
“It’s a perfect exhibit for families,” said Joel Alpern, chief of education and guest experience for the Botanical Garden, in the heart of Cleveland’s University Circle neighborhood. “Many of the interactive components — such as the Caterpillar Crawl — allow family members to work together toward a goal.”
The experience of the transition from caterpillar to butterfly begins just inside the botanical garden’s entrance, when ticket holders enter a huge caterpillar — a 40-foot-long, 10-foot-wide platform tunnel inside a model caterpillar. It leads to the Garden’s Clark Hall, where an interactive maze of larger-thanlife leaves, grass and trees includes engaging features such as a butterfly zipline and a climbable spiderweb.
Visitors learn, for instance, how caterpillars must work to avoid The Hairy Plant Attack.
“Passion flowers have tiny hooks on their leaves that are sharp enough to ward off caterpillars,” Alpern said. “Part of the maze has a passion flower to avoid.”
It’s not a real passion flower, of course, but a photo of one is displayed for that interactive component.
Games to be played educate about nectar, life cycles and mating, and visitors even can climb into their own pupa pods — a perfect photo opp.
Once it becomes a caterpillar, the creature’s job is to eat, eat and grow. Each eats a specific type of leaf as it grows, so the butterfly’s main job is to lay its eggs on the type of leaf its caterpillar needs. As the caterpillar grows, it sheds its skin, and, when it has finished growing, it forms a pupa, or chrysalis. Once inside the pupa, it begins its metamorphosis, forming wings and other parts, which allow it to emerge as a butterfly.
Children will be able to dress up with colorful, iridescent wings designed to show how butterflies attract their mates. The exhibit will use a modified zipline to show how Monarch butterflies from this area migrate to other places each fall.
School groups already have reserved times to attend the interactive show.
Allow time, when you come, to meander through the Garden’s glass house, which includes biomes replicating Costa Rica’s cloud forest and Madagascar’s desert — complete with the plants, flowers and creatures that make these places their home.
Real pupa pods hang inside the lower-level entrance, where visitors can watch their transformation.
The release of live butterflies, which will take place at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. each day, likely will a highlight of any visit. Up to 75 butterflies will be released to fly free each time. Those who stand very still in a sunny spot inside the glass house often will find that a butterfly or two has perched on a hand, head or shoulder.
“They tend to gravitate toward the sunniest places,” explained Dave Lowery, VP of marketing for the Botanical Garden’s parent organization, Holden Forests & Gardens.
Butterflies that can be spotted include the Blue Morpho, Banded Owl, Malachite, Grecian Shoemaker, Rusty-tipped Page, Zebra Longwing and Postman. Largest of the butterflies is the The Giant Owl, aka Caligo eurilochus.
“We’ve doubled our butterfly order, and they’ll be released several times a day during the ‘Amazing Butterflies’ show,” said Alpern.
Release times will be detailed daily at cbgarden. com.