Now is the time to see blue morpho butterflies at Powell Gardens

Outdoor temperatures are rising, finally, but it won’t be all butterflies and blooms for a while.

Sorry for that reality check, but don’t despair. Starting Saturday, spring breakers without a southern strategy can head to the Powell Gardens conservatory to see hundreds of blue morpho butterflies. Inside it will be a constant 82 degrees and 60 percent humidity.

The large and showy blue morphos are the most popular butterflies at Powell Gardens’ butterfly festival every summer. But unless you’ve been to a tropical butterfly farm, you’ll likely never see a concentration to rival this “Out of the Blue” special exhibit.

Some 1,200 pupae have been arriving in batches from El Bosque Nuevo, a Costa Rican butterfly farm, said Alan Branhagen, Powell’s horticulture director and a butterfly expert. The farm directs all butterfly proceeds to rainforest conservation and research.

Once they emerge, the butterflies live about two weeks, which means several hundred will always be flitting about the conservatory in the visitor center. Most will have a five-inch wingspan, but a particularly intriguing thing about them is the source of their blue color, Branhagen said.

“They’re so bright that they look like they’re plugged in,” he said, “but their blue color is not actually color. We see them as blue because of the way light reflects off the structure of the scales on their wings. It’s not pigment. They never fade.”

While the topside of the wings look blue, the undersides are painted in brown eyespots, camouflage against predators while eating. Their wings fold up as they enjoy tree sap and fermented fruit.

Blue morphos are found in regions from southern Mexico through South America. Branhagen said one of the exhibit’s messages is our area’s inextricable link to the rainforest for food, medicine, even our weather patterns. Migrating insects and birds pollinate our plants and devour insects. The rainforest helps sequester carbon.

For the exhibit, the conservatory has been filled with hundreds of tropical plants, including a diverse display of orchids, begonias and palms.

“It’s a lush tropical jungle in there,” Branhagen said.

Also on display is a recently donated collection of more than 500 butterfly specimens assembled by the late Richard Meier Minteer.

When Minteer’s family sent photographs to find out if the botanical garden would be interested in housing the collection, Branhagen said, “I about fell out of my chair.”

It’s a “greatest hits” compendium of butterflies from the region and across the globe, he said. The specimens are preserved in 30 cases, and the oldest dates to 1963.

“It’s inspiring to see so many beautiful creatures,” Branhagen said.

Of regional interest, he said, are the collection’s regal fritillary specimens, orange and black butterflies like the monarch but even more endangered, he said.

The Kansas City region is at the center of efforts to save the regal fritillary, which retains a stronghold in Kansas’ Flint Hills and in prairie land around Sedalia.

Just as the monarch depends exclusively on milkweed plants, the regal fritillary needs the prairie violet to survive, Branhagen said. The butterfly has been nearly wiped out east of the Mississippi River because of the demise of prairie habitat.

“It’s a beautiful butterfly and really in decline,” Branhagen said, “but several area groups are working to protect what prairie we have.”

Special talks and other events connected to the exhibit are scheduled through March, including a “photography day” Tuesday, a discussion of technical innovations inspired by the blue morpho wing structure March 14 and 15, and a demonstration of animal adaptations in the tropics, plus “insect tastings,” March 28 and 29.

To reach Edward M. Eveld, call 816-234-4442 or send email to eeveld@kcstar.com. On Twitter @eeveld.

This story was originally published March 6, 2015 at 12:52 PM with the headline "Now is the time to see blue morpho butterflies at Powell Gardens."