The piano key butterfly was developed by Ronald Boender, the owner/founder of Butterfly World.
ABOVE: A pair of colorful macaws are just a few of the birds at Butterfly World.
BELOW: Detail of a butterfly head and antennae.
Photography by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
INSET BELOW: Ronald Boender
By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley
If you live in South Florida and plant a few red salvias, some milkweed and perhaps a fire bush or two, you might attract butterflies to your backyard. Now, imagine a 10-acre garden with about 3,000 butterflies on display representing more than 150 different species.
Like your butterfly garden on steroids, Butterfly World in Coconut Creek is the world’s largest butterfly park.
Besides offering the public a chance to learn more about butterflies and enjoy their beauty, Butterfly World is a living butterfly farm and research facility. Here butterflies are raised from egg to winged beauty and you can follow the whole process.
It’s all thanks to Ronald Boender (pronounced BOON-der), who grew up on a farm in Illinois where the cabbage white and black swallowtail butterflies as well as silk moths drew his attention.
After years working as an electrical engineer, he retired, and that’s when his childhood fascination was reignited. Moving to Florida in 1968, he began raising and studying butterflies in his backyard. In 1988, he opened Butterfly World.
At the park, screened enclosures showcase birds, butterflies and butterfly-attracting plants.
Entering the double doors, you’ll feel a whoosh of air on your face. That’s to prevent the butterflies from escaping.
Now look around. You’ll have a sense of movement and color. But look more closely and you’ll discover butterflies floating in the air, lighting on a flower or just generally stirring things up.
If you focus on one butterfly at a time, you might see a tiger showing off its yellow-and-black-striped wings. The piano key butterfly, developed by Boender, has what look like white and black piano keys along the lower portion of its wings.
The blue morpho at first glance appears brown and rather boring as it sits on a leaf. But when it takes flight, it exposes an iridescent jewel-blue wing span.
And don’t miss the white morpho. It’s a large fluffy flutter of a butterfly that seems to float through the air.
To keep these butterflies well fed, there are, of course, plenty of showy plants. Think the geiger tree with bursting orange blossoms, a lucky nut with yellow flowers, the red poofs of the powder puff plant and plenty of pentas in pink, purple and red.
Leaving the butterflies behind, you can visit Grace Gardens, named for the founder’s wife. Set around a manmade lake, it features the handkerchief tree, with flowers formed from petals that look like pink folds. And there’s the dancing lady orchid, named for the shape of its yellow flowers.
The Vine Maze passes through trellises covered with more than 30 varieties of passifloras, or passion vines, with names such as volcano, star bristol and inspiration. But there’s more to Butterfly World than just Lepidoptera and their foodstuffs.
In a screened aviary, a pair of tiny shaft-tail finches rub their orange beaks together in greeting. The yellow-legged honey creeper is a 2-inch ball of bright blue feathers with contrasting touches of black.
And there’s the Lorikeet Encounter Aviary, where you can get up close and personal with one of more than 40 orange, green, blue and yellow plumed parrots.
They will climb on your head, walk on your arm and just generally clown around. In this aviary, children as well as adults are encouraged to play with their new feathered friends.
Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley is a certified master gardener who can be reached at debhartz@att.net when she’s not in her garden.
BELOW: Ted Moskalenko (left) and his dad, Edward, take pictures
as sister Michelle reacts to a butterfly that landed on her finger.
BELOW: A swallowtail butterfly.
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