Plants
At the Butterfly Park, plants and butterflies both share the limelight. With their beauty and importance, this the foundation for their lives and the park. They feed and reproduce in harmony. Each species of butterfly needs a specific plant to lay eggs which is the plant they eat as caterpillars, called the host plant. This relationship between plants and butterflies is the result of millions of years of evolution. The female butterfly will find and identify their host plant among the enormous botanical diversity of the rainforest because it depends on the survival of their offspring.
The plants you see in the butterfly fall into three categories, many of them have been brought directly from their countries of origin (Bali, Costa Rica, Thailand, etc.)
- Ornamental Plants. Tropical species selected for their uniqueness and beauty.
- Flowering plants rich in nectar. They are the ones that feed our butterflies. Not all flowers produce nectar, so it is important to know which species are suitable for landscaping the area of flight.
- Host plants. Are specific plants to reproduce and to feed the caterpillars
Biological control, our little helpers.
The Butterfly Park’s environmental conditions are ideal for our butterflies, but so are other undesirable inhabitants in any garden: pests. We can not fight them using insecticides, even biological therefore affect butterflies, why we do it through biological struggle that involves using natural enemies of pests to control. The effectiveness of biological control is based on the specific pest-controller it only survives as his target species (pest) is present. Species of our little army are:
- Amblyseius Swirski (predatory mite control Trips)
- Phytoseiulus (predatory mite control red spider)
- Criptolaemus montrouzieri (Coleoptera control mealybug)
- Aphidius matricariae (parasitic wasp to control aphid)
We are ecologically friendly.
One of our objectives is environmental education, which we strive to promote at the park. In our facilities, we use only natural organic fertilizers, vermicompost. Humus is a credit from the digestion of organic wastes by earthworms. It is a natural decomposition process that takes place in the complex digestive system of earthworms and that results in a 100% natural fertilizer that improves soil physical properties and provides beneficial microorganisms and nutritional elements. Its production is by the earthworm.