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Posts tagged ‘brimstone’

Sep 15

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Brimstone

Brimstone butterfly, Gonepteryx rhamni, male

Gonepteryx rhamni, male

I’ve been chatting to Michael Marlow via email about insects and macro photography. I explained that the majority of my photographs are essentially record shots and that I rarely take more artistic photos. But here’s an exception, a photo of a male Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni nectaring on Devils-bit Scabious and here’s another from a post last year.

I guess what’s probably most surprising about that statement is the fact that I am an artist or designer of sorts, albeit primarily a graphic artist and illustrator by profession. However, I have dabbled more seriously on the fine-art side of things and in this I was much encouraged by my late father-in-law, Gerard Lumley or Marcel Zouf as he liked to be known when working as an artist. He’s much missed.

For me though the fine-art path to be a serious painter led to nothing but trouble. Dilettantism, depression, and ultimately divorce. Well there’s only so much narcissistic self-destruction a relationship can take. Fortunately none of my paintings survive. I’ve rarely picked up a pencil or brush in the last 12 years but maybe my interest in insects will inspire me to start drawing again and who knows you might even get to see a doodle or sketch on this blog.

Incidentally, Michael’s just written an excellent series of articles about the reverse-lens method and diffused-flash on his excellent blog BugPhoto.net which I can highly recommend.

Mar 18

Stamped to pieces

Male Brimstone butterfly, Gonepteryx rhamni

Gonepteryx rhamni – Male

The Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni is one of our longest-lived butterflies. Adults emerging in July that have successfully over-wintered can still be on the wing the following July, 12 months later. Males like the one pictured above usually awake from hibernation first, typically in the first warm, sunny days of March, a couple of weeks before the females. So if you spot a yellow butterfly at the moment, it’ll be a Brimstone.

The sulphur yellow males are thought to be the original ‘butter-coloured fly’ and thus the source of the word ‘butter-fly’. The less conspicuous female is a much paler greenish-white in comparison. On the upperside, both sexes carry a distinctive single orange spot in the centre of each upper and lower wing, but these are tricky to see in flight. And this is a butterfly that never settles or feeds with its wings open. In fact on a dull day when perched amongst foliage, the veined and leaf-like scalloped wings blend with the leaves so convincingly that this can be an extremely hard insect to spot. Until that is it suddenly materialises in front of you like a splash of sunshine.

This butterfly was the subject of one of the earliest hoaxes. Shortly before his death in 1702, an English butterfly collector, William Charlton, sent a male Brimstone, hand-painted with additional black spots and blue moons on the lower wings, to the esteemed entomologist James Petiver. In 1763, none other than the great Carl Linnaeus declared it a new species Papilio eclipses and included it in the 12th edition (1767) of his Systema Naturae. Thirty years later, in 1793, the Danish entomologist, John Christian Fabricius, examined it more closely and realised it was a fake.

Allegedly, when the hoax was uncovered, the Keeper of National Curiosities at the British Museum was so annoyed he ‘indignantly stamped the specimen to pieces’. So the two specimens in the collection of the Linnean Society in London may actually be later replicas. Fake fakes if you will.