The most beautiful collection of butterflies!

Thousands of colourful wings light up the Botanical Garden Prague from 8 April to 22 May 2022.

During this year's exhibition you can admire the beauty of butterfly wings, their graceful flight and the mysterious transformation of the chrysalis into an adult butterfly. We will reveal the details of the butterfly body - the structure of butterfly wings, their eyes, legs and antennae of caterpillars and adult butterflies. We will have a look at the interesting structure of butterflies' proboscis and also caterpillars' mouths.

You will see that not only butterflies' wings are beautiful, but also that other parts of their bodies have charming structures.

Our garden cooperates with the butterfly farm in Stratford-upon-Avon for many years. We will gradually receive 5,500 chrysalises of several dozen species during the exhibition. Our "collection" of live butterflies includes the tropical beauties Morpho peleides and Morpho achilleswith their brilliant blue wings, the translucent Methona confusa, the butterfly travellers - the monarch butterflies, the colourful swallowtail butterflies, the large owl butterflies of the genus Caligo or the poisonous Atrophaneura semperi, as well as the poisonous butterflies of the Heliconius genus.
You can also see representatives of the nocturnal butterflies - Attacus atlas. Females of this species have a wingspan of up to 30 cm. Last but not least, you can admire the inconspicuous and very well camouflaged Charaxes saturns or its opposite - Siproeta stelenes with large bright green wings.

For the exhibition a unique anatomical model of the moth Attacus atlas was made by the sculptor MgA. Miroslav Jakubčík. This butterfly species is one of the largest butterflies in the world. You can admire the model near our tropical pond.

Butterfly hatching

The egg, the caterpillar and the chrysalis form the different stages butterflies have to go through in order to emerge and fulfil their main duty - to reproduce. After hatching, the adult butterflies wait for some time before their wings are completely flat and dry. Adult butterflies, as we can admire them in all their glory, are just another part of the butterfly developmental cycle.

Butterflies represent one of the most evolutionarily successful groups of insects - they are found all over the world except Antarctica. To date, 180,000 species have been described and more are being added.

Watch the hatching LIVE!