Butterflies & Waterlilies at Duke Gardens

This past Wednesday I helped Meg's second grade class with a field trip to Sara P Duke Gardens. As you know they are raising butterflies, Black Swallowtails. So far as of yesterday 5 have emerged and have been released. Many classrooms raise and release butterflies, usually I do not recommend releasing butterflies raised from kits shipped from across the country. Releasing butterflies from local wild sources is a very good thing to do.

Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on penta.

We found maybe 30 species of butterflies at Duke Gardens, the best ones were Painted Ladies, Long-tailed Skippers and a Delaware Skipper. About half the class witnessed a female Monarch laying eggs on Swamp Milkweed.

I had fun getting photos of the water gardens, every year the tropical water lilies get better. Still early in the water lily season I hope to go back and investigate further.

The lower terraces water garden looking from the right side.

The lower terraces water garden looking from the left side.

Burgundy water lilies so cool, hard to capture the color correctly on these beauties!

Lotus flower, this might have been a dwarf lotus, very small.

This is Autumn Clematis, it is having a great year here. Last spring I found a plant in the garden that the birds planted. I moved it to a better spot and it is already blooming. I saw honey bees gathering white nectar from it. We have a large mass of this going along the roadside about 1 1/2 miles from the house.