Are These Butterflies The Same?
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Around the time of the American Revolution, some North American lepidopterists were paying more attention to butterflies than to tea and taxes. As the redcoats and rebels squared off, the butterfly-chasers gathered their own army... of specimens, including two new species in the genus Limenitis. One was the White Admiral, a...black butterfly?… with white stripes. The Admiral lives mostly in today’s Canadian provinces – it’s the official insect emblem of Quebec. And further south, in the soon-to-be USA, there was a yellow-orange spotted blue, black, and brown butterfly, which the lepidopterists named the Red-Spotted Purple. Today, it’s New York State’s butterfly. Neither insect’s name seems totally spot-on, but the White Admiral is true to its...
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Around the time of the American Revolution, some North American lepidopterists were paying more attention to butterflies than to tea and taxes. As the redcoats and rebels squared off, the butterfly-chasers gathered their own army... of specimens, including two new species in the genus Limenitis. One was the White Admiral, a...black butterfly?… with white stripes. The Admiral lives mostly in today’s Canadian provinces – it’s the official insect emblem of Quebec. And further south, in the soon-to-be USA, there was a yellow-orange spotted blue, black, and brown butterfly, which the lepidopterists named the Red-Spotted Purple. Today, it’s New York State’s butterfly. Neither insect’s name seems totally spot-on, but the White Admiral is true to its...
