Selective Seduction - Butterflies in the Meadow

 

Common Wood-Nymph, Cercyonis pegala

Countless plants in the summer meadow raised their flowers up for notice. Interestingly, butterflies were not their prime customers in the barter of nectar for pollination. Unsuspected insects smaller and much more numerous than butterflies did most of the work. I would bend low to admire them buzzing and crawling in the microcosm of a flower. But butterflies were the attraction I thought both I and the flowers were entitled to.

Northern Crescent, Phyciodes cocyta

Despite the lovely impression they make there just weren't that many butterflies gracing the airways over the Park. The millions of up-facing yellow daisies (rudbeckias) in the meadow, spectacular enough to compose navigational lanes to Logan airport, should have drawn legions of lepidoptera. The occasional butterflies sampling those flower coronas were modestly proportioned and decorated types. There‒I confess my delight in lavish display.

Eastern Tailed-Blue, Cupido comyntas

Not that lavish only goes with large or with excess. It can be a force in miniature if your observations are drawn to intimate scale.

Hawaiian Beet Webworm Moth, Spoladea recurvalis

Some of the lepidoptera were moths rather than butterflies.

Clouded Sulphur, Colias philodice

Nature was confirming one of its general principles in this specific endeavor, that when it comes to flowers one flavor doesn't fit all.

Horace's Duskywing, Erynnis horatius

Incidentally, all those yellow petals made a distinctive backdrop for their earth-toned visitors.

An overflying spectacle

Once in a while a tantalizing, vivid butterfly would survey the field of yellow flowers without stopping.

Black Swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes

If it stopped at all its focus might settle on something to my eye more modest, but evidently more desirable in its own way.

American Copper, Lycaena hypophlaeas

Clover blossoms often won favor in this way. Their nectar reservoirs counted as a preferred destination for many foragers.

Monarch, Danaus plexippus

Diverse various floral characteristics have co-evolved with the tastes, anatomy, and life schedules of a certain range of pollinators. Sometimes the relationship is so specific as to be obligate, requiring that one and only partner for survival. It all adds up to a prolific encyclopedia of possibilities and change.

Zabulon Skipper, Lon zabulon

The daisy clan wraps up its floral pageantry late in the season with the nutritious crescendo of asters.

Cabbage White, Pieris rapae

Confetti-like Cabbage Whites that have fluttered disdainfully all summer over yellow-hued members of the family at last find their ambrosia in purple.