The ant blue is picky.

The butterfly is looking for a very specific flower, which it recognizes by its smell, the great burnet.

The butterfly species cannot survive without this one type of flower, which thrives, for example, in the “sweet little ones”, a green area near Bad Soden-Neuenhain.

The insect depends on this plant because it provides food and the possibility of reproduction.

Jan Schiefenhoevel

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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When the adult butterflies hatch in July, they suck nectar from the reddish-brown flowers, which are as big as a fingertip, as butterfly expert Matthias Fehlow explains.

After mating, they lay the eggs in the opening flowers.

The resulting caterpillars eat the ovary in the flower.

After moulting, the caterpillar then depends on another species of insect, a specific type of ant.

The caterpillar drops from the flower onto the ground, waiting for the ants to find it.

To do this, the caterpillar camouflages itself chemically as an ant larva, the ants fall for it and take the butterfly caterpillar with them to their nest on the ground of the meadow.

The caterpillar lives there for eight to ten months until it becomes an adult butterfly that searches for burnet flowers again.

Still at home in the meadows

The ant blue finds these very special living conditions in the sweet ground.

Because there are "meadows with alternating humidity", as the experts call a biotope that is not always swampy like a wet meadow.

That's why the butterfly expert Fehlow comes to the nature reserve every year and, as an expert on behalf of the Main-Taunus district, uses binoculars to keep an eye out for the common blue - whose wings are not blue, but light brown and spotted.

In the meadows, the light blue and the dark blue are still at home.

This is a rarity because these butterfly species are threatened with extinction and are strictly protected.

According to European rules, where these animals still occur, protected areas must be created so that they retain their habitat, as Fehlow explains.

According to him, it is important that the meadow is not mowed at the wrong time - then the butterfly could not reproduce.

The grass may only be cut before June 15th and in September, but not at the time when the butterfly hatches.

Otherwise the flowers that the insect needs to survive would be cut off.

The farmer Jürgen Schaar, who manages the meadowland in the Süßen Grundtchen, even spared a strip during the last mowing and left the grass and herbs there in full length.

Fertilizer in the meadow would also destroy the habitat, because certain types of grass grow faster with fertilizer, which then crowds out the knapweed.

Population of endangered butterflies stabilized

A sanctuary for the rare butterflies also benefits other species that thrive in great diversity in a meadow with alternating humidity, as Fehlow explains.

In the Main-Taunus district, in addition to the green area near Neuenhain, the Sauerbornsbach valley near Schwalbach is designated as a protected area for the blue ants, as the district's environmental officer, Madlen Overdick (Die Grünen), says.

According to her, the population of endangered butterflies has thus been stabilized.

In the past, the sweet little corner was anything but a nature reserve, there were recreational gardens with fences and hedges, which made it difficult for the rare butterflies to survive.

Even if nature and species protection has priority in the green area, the meadows are still used for agriculture.

Farmer Schaar, who runs an organic farm in Sulzbach, takes biodiversity into account and is careful when mowing.

However, he uses the mowed grass mixed with herbs as fodder for his Angus cattle.

In this way, nature conservation and use can be reconciled, and the green area is there for animals and people.