Do You Love Butterflies? They Have Arrived at the Meijer Gardens!

You know Spring is just around the corner when the annual Fred & Dorothy Fichter Butterflies Are Blooming exhibition at Meijer Gardens, the largest temporary tropical butterfly exhibition in the nation, opens. The good news is the butterflies have arrived so let the fluttering begin!

Tropical butterflies from around the world fly freely in the Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory and the exhibit is open now through the end of April.

Throughout the exhibition, there is special educational programming and the Lena Meijer Children’s Garden offers butterfly-themed activities as well.

Approximately 60 colorful butterfly and moth species have come from Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Philippines, and Kenya to fly freely in the five-story, 15,000-square-foot Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory.

It's a warm one in there at 85 degrees and 70 percent humidity. It has to be this way since this balmy environment mimics the tropical regions the butterflies call home.

It's so cool as you can watch butterflies drinking nectar from the flowering plants and feeding stations. You'll see the blue common morpho, as well as brush foot varieties such as the clearwing, lacewing and zebra mosaic who are expected to take flight.

Approximately 1,000 chrysalides are delivered to Meijer Gardens each week of the exhibition. It's exciting to watch the delicate chrysalides and cocoons being placed in the Observation Station, where they transform and spread their wings for the first time.

Here is something I'll bet you didn't know. The newly hatched caterpillars of some butterfly species are only about 2 millimeters in length—smaller than a grain of rice? Did you know that a butterfly’s wings are covered in fragile, microscopic scales, overlapping like roof shingles—200 to 600 per square millimeter? Cool, huh?

For hours of the Gardens and admission rates, CLICK HERE!