Butterfly Pavilion
The Butterfly Pavilion is located in Westminster, Colorado. It opened on July 15, 1995, and was the first stand-alone non-profit insect zoo in the United States. The facility is situated on of land, and contains five main exhibit areas to teach visitors about butterflies and other invertebrates. The main exhibit is an indoor rain forest filled with 1,200 free-flying tropical butterflies. The Butterfly Pavilion is a non-profit facility with most of its funding coming from admission fees, corporate sponsorship, and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD) of Colorado. Because it imports non-native insect species, the Pavilion is regulated by the USDA. Butterfly Pavilion is an AZA accredited facility. History In 1990, the Rocky Mountain Butterfly Consortium was created with the intention of creating a public butterfly house. The Butterfly Pavilion and Insect Center, the first free-standing butterfly house and invertebrate zoo in the United States, was opened about fi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Westminster, Colorado
The City of Westminster is a home rule municipality located in Adams and Jefferson counties, Colorado, United States. The city population was 116,317 at the 2020 United States Census with 71,240 residing in Adams County and 45,077 residing in Jefferson County. Westminster is the eighth most populous city in Colorado. The city is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range Urban Corridor. The Westminster Municipal Center is located north-northwest of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. History Gold discovered in the South Platte River Valley in 1858 brought national attention to the area that would become Westminster, Colorado. The promise of fortune and The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged many pioneers from the east to settle in Colorado rather than continue on to California. Before the settlements came, wildlife like antelope and buffalo made their homes in the area. There is also evidence of Arapaho Indians near t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Horseshoe Crab
Horseshoe crabs are marine and brackish water arthropods of the family Limulidae and the only living members of the order Xiphosura. Despite their name, they are not true crabs or crustaceans: they are chelicerates, most closely related to arachnids, such as spiders and scorpions. Horseshoe crabs live primarily in and around shallow coastal waters on soft, sandy or muddy bottoms. They are generally found in the intertidal zone at spring high tides. They are eaten in some parts of Asia, and used as fishing bait, in fertilizer and in science (especially ''Limulus'' amebocyte lysate). In recent years, population declines have occurred as a consequence of coastal habitat destruction and overharvesting. Tetrodotoxin may be present in one horseshoe crab species, '' Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda''. Fossil records for horseshoe crabs extend back as far as 480 million years ago, with extant forms being living fossils. A 2019 molecular analysis places them as the sister group of Ricinule ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tourist Attractions In Adams County, Colorado
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic (within the traveller's own country) or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments. Tourism numbers declined as a result of a strong economic slowdown (the late-2000s recession) between the second half of 2008 and the end of 2009, and in consequence of the outbreak of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, but slowly recovered until the COVID-19 pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lavender
''Lavandula'' (common name lavender) is a genus of 47 known species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae. It is native to the Old World and is found in Cape Verde and the Canary Islands, and from Europe across to northern and eastern Africa, the Mediterranean, southwest Asia to India. Many members of the genus are cultivated extensively in temperate climates as ornamental plants for garden and landscape use, for use as culinary herbs, and also commercially for the extraction of essential oils. The most widely cultivated species, ''Lavandula angustifolia'', is often referred to as lavender, and there is a color named for the shade of the flowers of this species. Lavender has been used over centuries in traditional medicine and cosmetics. Description Plant and leaves The genus includes annual or short-lived herbaceous perennial plants, and shrub-like perennials, subshrubs or small shrubs. Leaf shape is diverse across the genus. They are simple in some commonly cult ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yarrow
''Achillea millefolium'', commonly known as yarrow () or common yarrow, is a flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. Other common names include old man's pepper, devil's nettle, sanguinary, milfoil, soldier's woundwort, and thousand seal. The plant is native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Asia, Europe, and North America. It has been introduced as a feed for livestock in New Zealand and Australia. Description ''Achillea millefolium'' is an erect, herbaceous, perennial plant that produces one to several stems in height, and has a spreading rhizomatous growth form. Leaves are evenly distributed along the stem, with the leaves near the middle and bottom of the stem being the largest. The leaves have varying degrees of hairiness (pubescence). The leaves are long, bipinnate or tripinnate, almost feathery, and arranged spirally on the stems. The leaves are cauline, and more or less clasping, being more petiolate near the base. The inflorescence has 4 to 9 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Penstemon
''Penstemon'' , the beardtongues, is a large genus of roughly 250 species of flowering plants native mostly to the Nearctic, but with a few species also found in the North American portion of the Neotropics. It is the largest genus of flowering plants endemic to North America. Formerly placed in the family Scrophulariaceae by the Cronquist system, new genetic research has placed it in the vastly expanded family Plantaginaceae. They have opposite leaves, partly tube-shaped, and two-lipped flowers and seed capsules. The most distinctive feature of the genus is the prominent staminode, an infertile stamen. The staminode takes a variety of forms in the different species; while typically a long straight filament extending to the mouth of the corolla, some are longer and extremely hairy, giving the general appearance of an open mouth with a fuzzy tongue protruding and inspiring the common name beardtongue. Most penstemons are deciduous or semi-evergreen perennials, t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aizoaceae
The Aizoaceae, or fig-marigold family, is a large family of dicotyledonous flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...s containing 135 genus, genera and about 1800 species. They are commonly known as ice plants or carpet weeds. They are often called vygies in South Africa and New Zealand. Highly Succulent plant, succulent species that resemble stones are sometimes called mesembs. Description The family Aizoaceae is widely recognised by taxonomists. It once went by the botanical name "Ficoidaceae", now disallowed. The APG II system of 2003 (unchanged from the APG system of 1998) also recognizes the family, and assigns it to the order Caryophyllales in the clade core eudicots. The APG II system also classes the former families Mesembryanthemaceae Fenzl, S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cactus
A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Greek word (''káktos''), a name originally used by Theophrastus for a spiny plant whose identity is now not certain. Cacti occur in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Although some species live in quite humid environments, most cacti live in habitats subject to at least some drought. Many live in extremely dry environments, even being found in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth. Because of this, cacti show many adaptations to conserve water. For example, almost all cacti are succulents, meaning they have thickened, fleshy parts adapted to store water. Unlike many other succulents, the stem is the only part of most cacti where this vital process takes place. Most species of cacti have lost true leaves, retaining only spines, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nicotiana
''Nicotiana'' () is a genus of herbaceous plants and shrubs in the Family (biology), family Solanaceae, that is Native plant, indigenous to the Americas, Australia, Southwestern Africa and the South Pacific. Various ''Nicotiana'' species, commonly referred to as tobacco plants, are cultivated as ornamental garden plants. ''Nicotiana tabacum, N. tabacum'' is grown worldwide for the cultivation of tobacco leaves used for manufacturing and producing List of tobacco products, tobacco products, including cigars, cigarillos, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco, Snuff (tobacco), snuff, and snus. Taxonomy Species The 79 accepted species include: * ''Nicotiana acuminata'' (Graham) William Jackson Hooker, Hook. – manyflower tobaccoKnapp et al. (2004) Nomenclatural changes and a new sectional classification in Nicotiana (Solanaceae) Taxon. 53(1):73-82. * ''Nicotiana africana'' Merxm. * ''Nicotiana alata'' Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link, Link & Christoph Friedrich Otto, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cosmos (plant)
''Cosmos'' is a genus, with the same common name of cosmos, consisting of flowering plants in the sunflower family. Description ''Cosmos'' are herbaceous perennial plants or annual plants growing tall. The leaves are simple, pinnate, or bipinnate, and arranged in opposite pairs. The flowers are produced in a capitulum with a ring of broad ray florets and a center of disc florets; flower color varies noticeably between the different species. The genus includes several ornamental plants popular in gardens. Numerous hybrids and cultivars have been selected and named. Distribution ''Cosmos'' species are native to scrub and meadowland in Mexico where most of the species occur. In the United States, some varieties may be found as far north as the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, but the range also extends through Central America to South America as far south as Paraguay. One species, '' C. bipinnatus'', is naturalized across much of the eastern United States and eastern Canada. It ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Isopogon Dubius
''Isopogon dubius'', commonly known as pincushion coneflower, is a species of plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a shrub with sharply-pointed, deeply lobed or pinnate leaves and more or less spherical heads of pink to reddish pink flowers. Description ''Isopogon dubius'' is a shrub that typically grows to a height of and has hairy reddish brown branchlets, the young branchlets and young leaves hairy. The leaves are deeply 3-lobed or pinnate, long on a petiole about long, the tips of the lobes, or of the leaflets, sharply-pointed. The flowers are arranged in sessile, more or less spherical heads in diameter with many hairy, egg-shaped involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are long, pink to reddish pink and glabrous. Flowering occurs from July to September and the fruit is a hairy nut, fused with others in hemispherical head up to in diameter. Taxonomy Pincushion coneflower was first formally described in 1830 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eagle
Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just 14 species can be found—2 in North America, 9 in Central and South America, and 3 in Australia. Eagles are not a natural group but denote essentially any kind of bird of prey large enough to hunt sizeable (about 50 cm long or more overall) vertebrates. Description Eagles are large, powerfully-built birds of prey, with heavy heads and beaks. Even the smallest eagles, such as the booted eagle (''Aquila pennata''), which is comparable in size to a common buzzard (''Buteo buteo'') or red-tailed hawk (''B. jamaicensis''), have relatively longer and more evenly broad wings, and more direct, faster flight – despite the reduced size of aerodynamic feathers. Most eagles are larger than any other raptors apart from some vultures. The smalles ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |