Where Butterflies Grow
by Joanne Ryder/illustrated by L.C.
Living on Earth click to listen to Lynne Cherry read Where Butterflies Grow on NPR
Where Butterflies Grow describes the metamorphosis and life of a black swallowtail butterfly. As she was beginning to research this book in the early 1980's, Lynne searched for weeks until she was able to find a biologist, Jo Brewer, who had documented the entire life cycle of the black swallowtail in photographs. Lynne worked from those photographs to insure scientific accuracy.
The setting of this book is Lynne's back yard in Connecticut where she lived from the mid 1970's until the mid 1980's in a circa 1780 farmhouse.
Every year Lynne's perennial garden bloomed and she watched the black swallowtails flying among the Queen Anne's Lace.
When Lynne moved to Washington, DC, she dug up part of all her plants, put them in cardboard boxes lined with plastic bags, and flew with them down to DC. She transplanted them into a butterfly garden at her farm in the Catoctin Mountains where generations of butterflies continue to enjoy them.