Butterflies in your pocket — a flashcard series busts myths and makes nature playfully close
The Malabar Gladeye Bushbrown and the Blue Oakleaf; the flashcards also reveal how butterflies survive by trickery, from looking like a dead leaf to flashing oversized “eyes”. Pic/Jayesh Vishwakarma
India hasn’t lacked chroniclers of its butterflies. From Isaac Kehimkar’s iconic Butterflies of India field guide to regional gems like Butterflies of Bengaluru and Butterflies of Uttarakhand, the country’s winged wonders have been photographed, catalogued, and celebrated in painstaking detail. In the digital realm, the Butterflies of India website boasts over one lakh curated images, and its mobile app doubles as both a field guide and a citizen-science tool. On screen, too, Life of Butterflies — filmed in a Western Ghats park — brings their life stories to vivid cinematic life.
Communities are joining in, too: in Delhi, the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) has stitched together urban butterfly corridors connecting micro-habitats across the city; in Trichy, a butterfly conservatory has been enriched with 100+ host and nectar plants; the annual “Big Butterfly Month” curated by Sohail Madan of WildTales inspires online talks, walks, counts, and art, engaging amateur enthusiasts and youth across the country; and in Mumbai, BNHS’s Conservation Education Centre in Goregaon runs butterfly-themed courses and once hosted a vibrant Butterfly Festival. Yet for all this attention, old myths still flutter on — like the idea that butterflies live only a day, or that seeing them in a city garden is a rare miracle.
Black Rajah
It is against this backdrop that a new endeavour takes flight. The Edutainment Biodiversity Flashcard Series, created by the Grandala Enviro Foundation (a not-for-profit founded in Mumbai in 2024), and developed under the aegis of SPROUTS — a 30-year-old Mumbai-based environmental consulting and eco-tourism organisation founded by wildlife biologist Anand Pendharkar — wants to do what even the most exhaustive guides sometimes struggle with: strip the science of its jargon, and place butterflies (and other taxa) in the palm of your hand, as play.
Each set of 40 flashcards is designed like a mini-lesson: sharp facts and context on one side, amazement on the other, with games, quizzes, art prompts, even small observation exercises that can be tried within city limits. Unlike thick field manuals, these cards invite teachers, parents, and students (especially homeschoolers and self-paced learners of all ages) to approach biodiversity with curiosity rather than caution. The idea is simple: reduce myths, replace fear with fascination, and nurture affection for creatures that are as much at home in Mumbai’s traffic islands as in the forests of the Western Ghats, Himalayas, Northeast India, and Andaman Islands.
Painted Lady. Pic/Pranad Patil
Butterflies are inseparable from the habitats they occupy — wetlands, mangroves, scrublands, and grasslands, each of which host their own palette of wings. In Western India, Sanjay Gandhi National Park, with its lush forested expanse, is home to more than 170 species, while the coastal mangroves around Sewri and Airoli sustain more delicate populations adapted to brackish ecosystems. These landscapes in and around Mumbai echo the diversity seen across the country, underscoring that the joy of spotting butterflies is also a quiet lesson in protecting the environments they depend on.
The flashcards don’t just stop at colour and form — they also reveal how butterflies survive by trickery. From looking like a dead leaf to flashing oversized “eyes,” they have survived by fooling predators with mimicry and camouflage. The Orange Oakleaf folds its wings to resemble dead foliage, while Lycaenids carry false antennae near their hind wings to trick predators about the location of the head. Female Common Mormons take it further, assuming the colour and pattern of the unpalatable Crimson and Common Rose butterflies — a textbook case of Batesian mimicry. Sometimes, multiple toxic species share the same warning signals, as seen in the group of Rose butterflies, reinforcing their “do not touch” message. Whether it is cryptic colouring, false eyespots, or full-blown impersonation, these designs all work towards the same goal: keeping the butterfly and their caterpillars and chrysalis alive long enough to carry its genes forward.
Archeduke. Pic/Anand Pendharkar
If mimicry is nature’s strategy, gardening is ours. Creating spaces that cater to a butterfly’s full life cycle — nectar plants for adults, host plants for caterpillars, puddles for minerals, and sunny corners for basking — is at the heart of butterfly gardening. Hardy plants such as Ixora, Lantana, Heliotrope, Cassia, Mussaenda, and Zinnia are irresistible to many species, while curry leaf, castor and Crotalaria serve as nurseries for caterpillars. As the series’ concept designer Pendharkar notes, “Every balcony or backyard can become a patch of wilderness, a corridor where butterflies find food and shelter. Butterflies are critical pollinators who are getting lost due to urbanisation and household pesticides, and we want to bring these beauties back within our mindset.” The flashcards complement this practice by turning plant-butterfly linkages into simple cues, nudging people to see gardening not just as ornamentation but as a way of replenishing the city’s flying colours.
If you start in Mumbai , then the Maharashtra Nature Park in Dharavi (Mahim) or Ovalekar Wadi in Thane are already weekend pilgrimages for families chasing the quick flutter of wings. Step outside the city and the trail widens to Bannerghatta in Bangalore, Srirangam in Tamil Nadu, or Asola Bhatti in Delhi; each a pocket of astonishing diversity in a country that hosts nearly 1500 of the world’s 17,500 butterfly species. Add to that the quieter treasures — a butterfly museum tucked into Shillong, Peter Smetacek’s painstakingly built collection in Sattal, or a research café in Bhimtal. It is this spread of colour, from Mumbai’s gullies to far-flung corners of India, that the new flashcard series tries to catch — turning the country’s butterfly wealth into something children and adults can hold, swap, and learn from.
Aerial view of the butterfly garden created by WildTales in Gandhisagar Wildlife Sanctuary, Madhya Pradesh
To make this trail of wings easier to hold in your hands, SPROUTS @sproutsoutdoors has put together its very first set of 40 edutainment flashcards on the Butterflies of India. Timed with Big Butterfly Month, the pack opens out over 100 species from India and beyond — a mix of life cycles, habits, diets, and quirky facts. The set is priced at R700 (R600 for early birds until October 22, plus R100/set for shipping), with pre-orders open. It’s also being pitched as a Diwali season gift, the sort that delights children while slipping in knowledge. The SPROUTS team — led by Anand Pendharkar and backed by a crew of naturalists, educators, illustrators, photographers, and conservation practitioners — see this as the start of a longer series. The next set of flashcards will turn to snakes, spiders, trees, amphibians, odonates, marine creatures and many more, expanding the idea beyond butterflies into another corner of India’s natural heritage. The series gives a new dimension to outdoor education for both the educator and the educated.
Purple and white varieties of Vervain (Verbena sp) in the garden. Creating spaces that cater to a full life cycle — nectar plants for adults, host plants for caterpillars — is at the heart of butterfly gardening
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No. of butterfly species in Sanjay Gandhi National Park
Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre is a culture columnist in search of the sub-text. You can reach her at sumedha.raikar@mid-day.com
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