The Tucson Botanical Gardens offers "Butterfly Magic" every winter. It opens on November 1 and runs through March 31.
Butterfly Magic was the brainchild of Dr. Henry Hagedorn, Professor of Entomology at the University of Arizona.
He brought the idea of a butterfly exhibit to the Gardens in 2003 and a year later, in October 2004, the exhibit was inaugurated.
The butterflies they display come from butterfly farms all around the tropics - in Asia, Africa, Central and South America.
This creates financial incentives to protect tropical rain forests needed to provide butterflies for the farms.
The Gardens receives several shipments of butterfly pupae, or chrysalides, every week from butterfly farms in South America,
Central America, Florida, Asia and Africa. During their dormant stage they are packed in cotton wool to protect them from transit damage
and temperature fluctuations. No matter where they originate from, they arrive at the Gardens within just a few days.
The chrysallides are unpacked and pinned to hang in an emergence chamber inside the Emergence Room.
The emergence chamber and room are temperature and humidity controlled to provide the optimum environment for the developing butterflies,
and carefully sealed to prevent the escape of butterflies or possible parasites.
Here are some of the wonderful, beautiful butterflies we saw.

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