Two Acmon Blues share an intimate moment…
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Love is like a butterfly, it goes where it pleases and pleases where it goes …
-Author Unknown
A perfect snowflake falls
Gently descending
Into a journey unending
It begins by
Waking to a dream
Of melting into stream
Then travels
As rainbow mist
Of waterfall color kissed
Only to rise again
A cloud cast night
Cloaking the moon’s soft light
Once more
Transformed anew
Sails to earth a drop of dew
Nurturer now
Of seedlings sought
By sweet sunflowers it is caught
Bright yellow blooms
Spring from the ground
Life for those who flutter round
In full circle
Creation is shown
Divine harmony known
Soaring upwards
Towards the heavens high
Blissful as a Butterfly
© Kristen D’Angelo
With a wingspan measuring just under a half of an inch (1.2-2 cm) the Western Pygmy-Blue (Brephidium exilis) is the smallest butterfly known in North America. Western Pygmy-Blues are not primarily blue in color, as their name suggests, but are instead varying shades of a lovely iridescent hue. Western Pygmy-Blues typically have coppery brown/blue dorsal wings, which shade to a brown ventral wing showing white dashes.
Western Pygmies also have four black dots near the base of the ventral hindwings and flaunt an arc of black silvery metallic dots along their far edge. These butterflies are also typically narrow to broadly fringed. Adults enjoy a variety of flower nectar, while caterpillars feed on host plants such as Saltbush (Atriplex) from the Goosefoot Family (Chenopodiaceae).
