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The butterfly gardener Photo by Steve Johnson James Alexander, a self-taught lepidopterist, designed the butterfly park on Ashland's Mountain Avenue. Ashland expert, 17, has always loved `little critters' By PAUL FATTIG ASHLAND -- At the sight of the huge thistle in their garden, most gardeners would let fly a curse and flail away with a sharp hoe. But the old-growth thistle nestled among rainbow-colored foxglove, lavender verbena and the rusty red common yarrow was no weed to gardener James Alexander. "That's a food plant for painted lady butterflies we have here," he explained. "They wanted to take it out. But I asked them to leave it." After all, Alexander designed the colorful butterfly garden at the North Mountain Avenue Park now under construction by the city of Ashland. "People take out a lot of plants that support butterflies," he said. "Thistles and milkweeds make good butterfly habitat. We need to leave them for the butterflies." Alexander, 17, is a self-taught butterfly expert who will co-teach a butterfly workshop Sunday at the Siskiyou Field Institute in Cave Junction. The workshop for youth, titled "The Ecology and Conservation of Butterflies," costs $15 per student. It is one of two dozen environmental workshops being coordinated through June 25 by the Siskiyou Regional Education Project. For more information, call 592-4459. Alexander's interest in butterflies took flight when he was a child. "I've always been fascinated by everything in the natural world," he said. "I've always been interested in little critters." When he expressed interest in butterflies, his parents -- Bonnie and Hank Passafero of Phoenix -- didn't try to dissuade him. "My dad even bought cocoons of giant moths from breeders and hatched them out in our house so I could see them," he said. The pupating lepidopterist was soon raising caterpillars in shoeboxes and jars. He designed and planted his first butterfly garden when he was 12. It was more than a hobby. His next step was to sell butterfly chrysalises (cocoons) on dried flower arrangements. "People would take them home, watch them hatch out, and get to see them dry their wings before they fly away," he said. "They crawl on your finger at that point. You can take them outside and let them go." Now Alexander, who plans to sell butterflies at local growers' markets this summer, designs butterfly gardens and raises butterflies for a living. He is graduating this year from high school after being home taught. Each year, he visits local schools to teach children about butterflies. He is designing a two-acre butterfly habitat at the Waldorf School in Ashland. "Everyone is interested in butterflies, whether it's a child finding a caterpillar on a plant or a college student studying chemistry of the plant material they eat," said Alexander, who recently returned from Costa Rica, where he visited four butterfly farms. Southern Oregon is a good place for a lepidopterist, he said, noting there are more than 150 species of butterflies in the region. "We're fortunate because there is still a lot of good butterfly habitat that is relatively undisturbed," he said. "But butterflies around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate, especially in our large cities," he added. "Butterflies are very, very sensitive to changes in their environment. And each butterfly species can only eat one or two species of host plant. Without those plants, they don't survive." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA