Field Trip to The Butterfly House

Friday, March 13: Finally! After a couple of weeks of trying, we managed to find a time when we could go with Mike and Sandy to the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House, which opened in 1998. It became part of the Missouri Botanical Garden in 2001. Some 80 tropical butterfly and 150 plant species are exhibited. It is located in Faust Park in Chesterfield, one of the western suburbs of St. Louis. The park also contains historic buildings and a working carousel.

Update on 3/18/09: Today I got a letter from The Butterfly House. They returned my MBG membership card, which I apparently lost while I was there. What class and customer service!

The Butterfly House contains many interpretive exhibits, a theatre, and a gift shop but the most distinctive feature is the spacious conservatory that exhibits tropical butterflies. Norm and Mike posed for me after we had basked in 80-degree warmth on a 40-degree day.


You have to enter the conserv- atory through double doors that are designed to keep the two thousand or so fluttering residents inside. The moist warmth immediately fogged our camera lenses, just as Mike, Norm and I all tried to focus on a specimen of the featured Blue Morpho species that was resting on an orchid blossom just inside the entrance. Norm got this shot with the "old" Olympus. Mike's Nikon D40 was fogged for about 10 minutes and all I got with the Canon SX110 was a closeup of a blue blur, but my lens did clear up pretty fast. Meanwhile, we listened to the squeals of some 60 grade school children who arrived on a field trip!

Lens cleared up and this is one of the interior views inside the conservatory. Winding paths take you past all kinds of vegetation and flowers attractive to butterflies, and feeding stations with slices of fruit were everywhere. Every few steps there was a bench or a rock wall where one could just sit and enjoy the blur of wings. Imagine what a great place it would be to meditate on some other day than field trip day!

One thing that surprised us was how unafraid of humans the butterflies were, and also how curious they were. This black and white Paper Kite butterfly became fascinated with Norm's camera. Later it explored his hand and his fingers--something must have seemed tasty. "It tickles!" Norm said just before I took this picture.

Mike's camera also attracted this fast flying fellow that I think is a Clipper from Southeast Asia although it never would light completely still so we could get a clear photo of all of its wings.






It was common to feel butterflies brush against our hair, and they frequently lit on our shirts and arms as well. One of the Blue Morphos is resting with its wings folded on a branch just behind and to the right of Sandy's head. Most of the children we saw in the greenhouse with their teachers and parents seemed curious and respectful of the butterflies, although one or two seemed terrified and screamed each time a "bug' fluttered near them--which in this place happens often!

Our adventure in the conservatory lasted about an hour, and then we decided we had had enough tropical warmth for the day. Afterwards we went to lunch at First Watch in Chesterfield and came home the back way through Maryland Heights, driving past the Missouri American water purification plant where our drinking water, extracted from the Missouri River, comes from. The post immediately below has more views of some of the exotic winged creatures that we enjoyed.