South Florida is home to many endangered butterflies, many of which are victims of habitat loss—like the destruction of Miami-Dade’s pine rockland forests from suburban development. Yet, once thought to be extinct, a small butterfly has made a comeback in the area that is quickly becoming a persistent problem for a renowned research facility, Montgomery Botanical Center, where its caterpillars feast on a curated collection of tropical plants, some of them rarer than the insect munching them.
The troublesome butterfly is the Atala, a South Florida native whose life cycle and survival are strongly tied to a unique “host plant” called the coontie. This plant, sometimes sold as the “coontie palm,” is known as a cycad. It is the only native North American member of a family of plants often referred to as “living fossils” because it has remained largely unchanged since the dinosaur age.
Atala butterflies lay eggs in the thick, fern-like foliage of the coontie, which then feeds emerging, insatiable caterpillars. These caterpillars will metamorphose into jet-black butterflies with bright red bodies and an iridescent teal shimmer on their wings.
Yet, it appears that these rare butterflies, which experts still consider endangered despite their reemergence, have an appetite for more than just the coontie plant—which has become a growing concern for the managers of Montgomery Botanical Center.
A lush 120-acre site concealed behind gates off Old Cutler Road, the Montgomery Botanical Center is home to one of the nation’s oldest and most diverse collections of cycads. Recognized for collecting seeds from wild plant populations around the globe, this renowned research facility aims to advance science, education, conservation, and horticultural knowledge of tropical plants, placing special emphasis on palms and cycads.
According to Vince Ramirez, the botanical center’s curator of cycads, the Atala caterpillars have caused “mass destruction” this year through an infestation that is serious enough to lead Ramirez to host scheduled tours this summer for butterfly enthusiasts to pluck caterpillars and transplant them to their own gardens at home.
Thought to be extinct even before the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, Atala’s history is tied to that of the coontie. Once wild-growing, the plant’s roots, originally ground up and used by indigenous tribes as flour (but have since proven poisonous if done incorrectly), entered overproduction as the region’s first cash crop. However, development eradicated much of the coontie plant, isolating it to wild stands and prompting the disappearance of the Atala.
It was Roger Hammer, a naturalist from South Miami-Dade, who spotted the Atala while searching Virginia Key in 1979 for a rare tree. Hammer, who caught the caterpillars munching on the toxic plant, quietly transplanted them to parks in Miami-Dade and Broward. Since then, the Atala has grown dramatically over the decades but is still considered endangered due to its confinement to South Florida.
The rise of the Atala population in South Florida, unfortunately, poses a threat to the population of cycads, with the botanical center having collected various seeds on over 50 expeditions to different countries.
The executive director of Montgomery Botanical Center, Patrick Griffith, stated, “The bottom line is it’s a dilemma because we love the plant and we love the butterfly… It’s a rare butterfly found in small numbers. But the healthier the butterfly, the worse it is for the cycads. The goal of the botanical center is now to strike a balance between protecting the plants and preserving the butterfly.
