The center of Florida is in bloom this time of year.

With the official start of summer in Florida, the shades of summer are bursting forth in Gainesville. Yet, the colorful attractions here don't sit still for long.
 
"Honestly, I have never been to anything like this,” said Kim Petrosky from Green Coast Springs, which is near Jacksonville.
 
"There are butterflies from around the world that doesn't happen in the real world," said Mike Boulware, a living exhibit specialist at the Butterfly Rainforest.
 
In Alachua County, the real world is shut out as a tropical paradise is in flight. The Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History is home to 1,500 to 2,000 butterflies under one roof.
 
A stroll through the enclosure and you'll think you're in Costa Rica. The heat of a Florida afternoon allows the butterflies to raise their internal temperature to the needed 100 degrees in order to take flight.  However, in the wintertime when they are moving a little bit slower, that's a photographer's paradise.
 
"The dead of winter is great if you are a photographer,” Boulware explained.  "In temperatures below 60 for example, the blue morphos flop open at about 60 to 65 so you can get photographs of them. That's a difficult photograph to get."
 
Also difficult, sitting still long enough to get one to land on you.
 
"It keeps our education going,” said Petrosky, a mother who explains although school is out, she still wants her children to keep learning.  “It's absolutely beautiful."
 
Visitors like the Petrosky family will keep the butterflies here flying and grow the real rainforest south of the Equator.
 
"The money that people spend when they come here, is what we use to buy these butterflies from people in developing countries, gives them an economic reason not to cut the rainforest, which we think is a good thing,” Boulware concluded.

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