ATLANTA, Ga.—An eighteen foot praying mantis rears over a path. Three twenty-five foot long ants line up on a sunny hill top. A lady bug the size of a Galapagos tortoise basks near a courtyard. Is it (a) A monster planet of the insects? (b) The traditional fairy and elf curse? (Word to the wise: never capture the little people, they might shrink you.) (c) A regrettable result of genetic engineering?
Answer: none of the above. It is the Big Bugs and Killer Plants exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. David Rogers built the enormous insects from recycled wood and other natural materials. The ants are made of sticks. The mantis appeared to be made of polished cedar and maple. Most of the creatures are beneficial, and all have signs explaining their usefulness. The ABG has a conservation mission, which includes educating all ages about the natural world. The bug exhibit is meant to show children the usefulness and beauty of pollinators like bees and butterflies, recyclers like ants, and predators like mantids.
Taste Them if You Dare
It's also meant to be fun. The exhibit brochure proposes "look into a pitcher plant leaf to find the dead bugs it has digested, pet a hissing cockroach, try on insect costumes" and "learn some kooky but yummy recipes using…mealworms, crickets and grubs. Taste them if you dare!" No one was daring to taste anything but ice cream on the weekday we visited, but they were looking into the pitcher plants to see what they had tasted. Like the spider, the dragonfly and the lady bug, "killer" pitcher plants and sundews eat pests. Pitchers eat flies and mosquitoes and look marvelous. They live in bogs, and bog habitat has been shrinking so much that pitcher plants are a threatened species, according to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Lowered water tables, herbicides and pesticides, suppression of fire and sellers or gardeners collecting the plants also threaten the unique herbs.
Atlanta Botanical Garden propagates the slow growing, beautiful pitcher plants to reintroduce them to their natural areas. It offers them for sale at members-only events twice a year. Hundreds of them were blooming in the bog area and the greenhouses. The garden works with other conservation organizations to preserve habitats including bogs and wetlands, and to rebuild populations of the plants.
Alive!
A potential conservationist in a stroller pointed as a quail ran under his feet in the orchid house. He shouted "Alive!" A girl pounded past a huge polished wood assassin bug, as goldfish and tadpoles swirled in a lotus pond beside her. A boy posed for a picture with the giant lady bug, and a man held a plump baby in front of a wall of orchids. The Atlanta Botanical Garden coats a pill of science and conservation in a tasty shell of art and play.
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