Tucson Botanical Garden

We visited the Tucson Botanical Garden back in January 2015 (did three posts about it: butterflies, garden and poison dart frogs. There is a new building that is the garden entrance and gift shop – with a lot more room than the older structure that was originally a house. We knew about the butterfly exhibit from last year and headed for that as soon as it was open since the air temperature was still pretty cool outside. Inside the greenhouse it was steamy and warm. I enjoyed the orchids and other tropical plants.

There were fewer butterflies than last year but one sat on my husband’s hat for a very long time. Can you see the curled proboscis?

Another sat high on some foliage and posed with wings wide open. The markings make the upper wing look pleated.

I only saw one poison dart frog and did not get a good picture. Disappointing. But….the docent told me that they have tadpoles; if they are successful raising them the population will be larger next year. The poison dart frog live multiple years and were originally brought to the butterfly house to eat fruit flies attracted to the fruit put out for the butterflies.

Outdoors, I noticed better signage this year for birds, lizards, and material for basket making. The signage is tile or protected by glass to survive the very hot temperatures of Tucson in the summer.

I saw a tiled bench with a pomegranate motif

And then the plant itself!

Arizona is famous for its geology and its deserts so I took a number of rocks/minerals along with desert plants.

Some of the colorful rocks look like they’ve been painted but the crystals of the mineral are often visible!

There were two special cactus images this time: a colorful one

And a dead one (for some reason – the curves in this piece of cactus stem appealed to me…maybe I should use it as a starting point for a Zentangle pattern).