Nancy

Dr. Nancy Greig is the founding director of the Cockrell Butterfly Center, which she oversaw from 1994 to 2016. As emeritus director she continues to work with the museum doing outreach and education. Her academic training is in botany and entomology, with a specialty in the interaction between insects, especially butterflies, and plants. In addition to cultivating backyard butterflies, she grows vegetables and bees

Monarchs want YOU to plant milkweed: Butterfly-friendly plants for sale at HMNS

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 […]

Exotic edibles & tongue trickery at Cockrell Butterfly Center: Trip out your taste buds Aug. 28!

The tropical vegetation in the Cockrell Butterfly Center features a number of plants with edible fruits. Some, such as coffee, chocolate, pineapple and papaya, are familiar and readily available in local stores. But most visitors — unless they hail from equatorial climes — are probably  unfamiliar with caimito, jaboticaba, calabash, Barbados cherry or miracle fruit. […]

Buzz or flutter: Who matters when it comes to pollination? (Hint: It’s everybody.)

In economic terms, bees far outstrip butterflies and moths as pollinators. However, there are some plants that are exclusively pollinated by butterflies — especially some wildflowers and garden ornamentals — and several night-blooming species are specifically pollinated by hawkmoths. Butterflies and moths are members of the insect order “Lepidoptera” — the scaly-winged insects. In addition […]