Did you know that the botanic community is split on the issue of butterflies? We didn't either, until we visited the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens this week on a field trip.

We were there for a screening of a documentary about the life cycle of butterflies called "In the Company of Wild Butterflies."   The film was presented by Sally Levinson, a docent for the gardens who's also known as "The Caterpillar Lady."

We learned that different kinds of butterflies need very specific kinds of chemicals found in very specific plants to survive. Swallowtails, for example, thrive on yampah, a plant that once grew profusely in the area. But there isn't much yampah around anymore, because marshes have been drained and houses have been built and development has wiped out natural habitat.

The swallowtail butterfly found a suitable replacement for yampah in fennel plants, and therein lies the problem. Fennel is a non-native, invasive weed, the kind of plant botanists are not at all fond of. So while the butterfly people would love it if you let that fennel stay in your garden, the botanists know that it constitutes a threat to other native plants.

What to do? Andy Liu, a landscape engineer who also volunteers at the botanic gardens, noted that you can control fennel without eliminating it entirely. You just have to make sure that it doesn't spread. So if you'd like more butterflies in your garden, let a few weeds join the party.





If you bring your camera to the gardens, it'd be nice to have a macro lens with you. When you take your pictures, keep in mind that sometimes the most interesting images are details; don't feel the need to show the whole butterfly or the entire scene you're looking at. Just zoom in on a little piece of the action and your photos will become more dramatic.

The good news is that you don't even need a fancy DSLR to have some fun. Most point-and-shoots have a macro function that'll give you good results, and because their apertures are often very small, your depth of field will be wider, too.

These photos were taken with a DSLR, fitted with a 100mm macro lens. You can see how narrow the depth of field is. So why use the DSLR at all? You'll get better color rendition. And a blurry background (also known as bokeh) can really heighten the impact of the part of the photo that's in focus.