By Jeff Cummins, Horticulturalist at the Cockrell Butterfly Center A sea of green surrounds people living in even the most urban environments, and yet almost nobody can see truly the plants. We see the trees, manicured hedges, or notice when our neighbor has taken a little too long to mow the lawn, but that’s […]
Spring is in the air and the Houston Museum of Natural Science Spring Plant Sale is right around the corner! If you are in need of plants, we will have thousands! There will be over 20 different species of host plants for butterflies, over 100 different species of nectar plants for all hungry pollinators, […]
By Theresa Freiburger, Cockrell Butterfly Center Horticulturalist and Greenhouse Manager It’s that time of year again! The Cockrell Butterfly Center is having its annual SPRING PLANT SALE on April 1, 2017 at 9am. As usual, it will be located on the 7th floor of the parking garage at the Houston Museum of Natural […]
One of the most distinctive and easily recognizable insects in the Cockrell Butterfly Center is the rice paper butterfly (Idea leuconoe), also known as the paper kite and the large tree nymph. All these common names allude to the rice paper’s characteristic slow, graceful, and sometimes floppy flight. These butterflies make great, showy additions to […]
They float on the wind, decorate your back yard in the spring and summer, and inspire warm emotions with their delicate wings. They seem carefree, at home in any meadow, but butterflies have more specific needs than we might imagine. As urban sprawl continues to grow, reducing green space and native plant growth, natural butterfly […]
We are sorry to disappoint monarch enthusiasts, but the Cockrell Butterfly Center has decided not to sell tropical milkweed (aka Mexican milkweed, Asclepias curassavica) any more. Instead, we will have a limited quantity of native milkweeds for sale. Recently, biologists studying monarchs have discovered that tropical milkweed may be a factor in the spread of […]
My friends Bob and Bev photographed this very faded, tattered female monarch flying around the milkweed plants in their backyard near the Museum last week. The butterfly is a migrant from Mexico, looking for places to lay her eggs as a last hurrah before she dies. She must be very tired! Last fall, she flew […]
The butterflies need your help! With urbanization, and a host of other factors, monarch butterflies are at risk of not finding places to lay their eggs. So why not help while improving the butterfly traffic through your garden with a butterfly-seducing plant from our biannual plant sale? Milkweed plants in the genus Asclepias are extremely […]
