Buttorfleoge or Flutterby… it’s Butterfly to me!

June 20, 2018 by RMW 14 Comments

In researching the origin of the name “butterfly” I came up with two possibilities. 1. The Anglo-Saxons coined the word ‘butterfloege’ because the most common butterfly at the time was the yellow brimstone butterfly. 2. They were called flutterby (obviously because they fluttered by) in Victorian times and after a while the name was reversed to butterfly. Maybe a combination of both.

I make the effort to visit the Butterfly Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum every two or three years.

It’s somewhat of a meditative experience to mingle with the winged creatures for half an hour.

Our reservation was for 11:00am and I must say the creatures were very active at that time of day.

The docent informed us they were fluttering around looking for the right place to lay their eggs.

The butterflies can’t lay their eggs just any old place. It has to be the right plant or the eggs won’t hatch, or if they hatch they will die.

So every kind of butterfly has a specific plant to lay its eggs on.

So when humans wipe out certain kinds of plants the butterflies get wiped out too.

We humans continue to cause all kinds of havoc for nature.

In the pavilion there was plenty of mating going on.

Please click on an image below for slide show.