Many approaching a 30th birthday want to hang on to 29 as long as possible. Frank Elia could hardly wait for his: ”All I want to do is live to my 30th birthday,” he had said on an ominously hectic day over the summer.
He was able to kick back and enjoy his 30th on Wednesday because he had met a yearlong goal: The Day Butterfly Center at Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Ga., had been unveiled Sunday.
Elia is a lepidopterist, a scientist who studies butterflies, among other insects. His task is raising and overseeing 800 to 1,000 butterflies that sail freely under 8,000 square feet of glass in the Day Center`s unique octagonal conservatory, the largest butterfly house in North America.
For those who only have seen butterflies mounted with a pin through the back in a science project, it can be enchanting to walk among hundreds of fluttering bursts of blue, orange and yellow at the Day Center. Often they land on shoulders, hands or even hair, seeking the sweetness of hairspray.
Tropical foliage, nectar-rich flowers for butterfly food and a 12-foot waterfall, stream and pool let visitors believe they are in a rain forest. Hummingbirds and pheasants, which share quarters with the butterflies, add to the natural effect.
The opening of the center notwithstanding, Elia will not rest for long. The life expectancy of a butterfly is two weeks, on average, so Elia oversees a series of production greenhouses over a hill from the Day Center.
He nurtures eggs laid by mature butterflies, supervises the hatching into caterpillars (his favorite stage of the life cycle), monitors the formation of the chrysalides, or cocoons and prepares for the butterflies to emerge as educational attractions. Exhibits of the life cycle are included in the $5.3 million Day Center.
The center, in a meadow deep in the lush woods at Callaway, is the dream of Deen Day Smith as a memorial to her husband, Cecil Burke Day, founder of the Days Inns of America Inc. motel chain. Day died of bone cancer at age 44 in 1978. The next year his widow began campaigning for a facility in which people could mingle with natural beauty.
Smith, who remarried five years ago, knew that Callaway officials would be convinced once they had seen a butterfly house. Such structures are common in England, elsewhere in Europe and in Japan, but there are only three in the United States.
”We went on a fact-finding mission together,” recalled Dr. William Barrick, director of Callaway Gardens. ”We visited some of the top entomologists and got good feedback.”
On the trip was G. Harold Northrop, president of the Ida Cason Callaway Foundation and Garden Services Inc., the resort component of the Callaway complex.
”We both went to Europe and were so pleased especially in how children related in the house,” Barrick said. ”It was a magical experience to see the butterflies in free flight. In hearing the story about the monarch, we knew it was truly appropriate for Callaway.”
Barrick referred to the tale of imported monarch butterflies that escaped from an English butterfly house and went searching for their favorite food, milkweed, not usually found in England. Loose in a strange land among strange foods, the monarchs navigated miles to London`s Kew Gardens, where they were observed feeding on the milky liquid of the plants.
”One of the reasons Mrs. Smith chose Callaway,” Barrick said, ”was because we were experienced in greenhouse environments, and the success of a butterfly exhibit is not just on the butterflies but being able to provide the right habitat and culture of plants.
”We`ve been in this (the greenhouse) business 30 years, and for the last 20 years we have had a strong commitment to education, not just in horticulture but in the naturalistic fields, bird life and wildlife. So this was an opportunity to do both, to showcase living things other than plants. It was a good marriage for the educational program.”
Meanwhile, Elia had spent 3 1/2 years at the Cincinnati Zoo`s butterfly house-the other two are in Florida and California-before taking on the challenge to nurture Callaway`s butterflies.
Every butterfly in the Day Center is from tropical regions, so even in the event of an escape, new colonies could not replace them because the food and climate would be inhospitable, Elia said.
Why tropicals when there are so many native species?
”We find that . . . tropical butterflies do much better in closed areas,” Elia said.
”They are used to living in jungles, where it`s darker and they had very small home ranges. Tropical butterflies are better suited to indoors, natives to outdoors.”
Native butterflies abound on the grounds at Callaway. Elia has identified 72 species, ”fabulous for an area that is as small as Callaway.” ”Many of our native butterflies are just as pretty as the tropicals.”
The tiger swallowtail is Georgia`s state butterfly and the Callaway mascot.
Plantings surrounding the Day Center are what Elia calls ”wildlife gardens,” designed to attract wildlife, including butterflies.
”The take-home message here is that these gardens can be used to teach people to do this in their own back yards,” he said.
Butterflies are a metaphor for the interconnectedness of the natural world, according to Barrick and Elia.
”When you watch people in butterfly displays, you get to see the magic in it,” Elia said.
”It`s funny, because a lot of our people will say, `You should see children in butterfly displays,` and I always point out that adults become children in butterfly displays.
”When you go to a butterfly house, you give people a closeup look at nature, and this is as close as you`ll get, when a butterfly lands on you. So picture the magic in someone`s eyes or mind when a butterfly lands on them.
”We use this to tie in the whole theme that we`re all in this together. Butterflies are gorgeous, but they need plants, they need flowers. If you chop down all the plants, you`re going to lose the butterflies.
”In the butterfly center, we`re going to try to tie this whole ecosystem bit in that we need the whole chain. Every link in the chain is just as important, and we`re using the beautiful butterfly as our motto.”
That motto extends to all of Callaway. The land was farmed for cotton, but intensive cultivation robbed the soil of nutrients and left a barren landscape.
Textile industrialist Cason Callaway set out in the 1940s to return natural beauty to the now 2,500 acres that comprise the gardens. The showcase of the native plants of the Southeast was opened in 1952.
To honor his mother, Callaway created the Ida Cason Callaway Foundation to administer the gardens ”for the benefit of mankind and to combine a manmade landscape with a natural setting where all may find beauty, relaxation, inspiration and a better understanding of the living world.”
The gardens remain a nonprofit component. A subsidiary operates lodging, dining and recreational facilities. Profits are returned to the foundation to offset garden costs.
Despite the rural setting, Callaway attracts more than 750,000 visitors a year. It is between Atlanta, 70 miles to the northeast, and Columbus, Ga.
Facilities include the Sibley Horticultural Center, a creative 5-acre conservatory open to the elements on one side, its sliding-glass doors closing automatically in bad weather.
There are a 365-room inn, more than 200 villas and cottages, four golf courses, a large manmade lake with beach, a 7 1/2-acre demonstration vegetable and fruit garden that is the Southern setting for ”The Victory Garden”
television show, a 1,000-acre hunting preserve and the largest resort conference facility in the state.
A whole generation who grew up coming to Callaway are bringing their own families for the weeklong recreation program, Barrick said. Special programs for children free parents to pursue their own interests.
But don`t look for Elia. Chances are, he will be down the road and over the hill at the greenhouses, making sure the lantana are blooming as prelude to the next meal for his friends. Or he may be on the phone to Hong Kong, buying Asian butterflies.
Or if he is doing what he enjoys most, he`ll be off in South America, perhaps baiting a trap with bananas splashed with cognac to attract a new species for the center.
There`s a whole new world out there now that Elia has made it to 30.
