‘Tis A (Butter) Fly Season
APRIL
2013
By
Tom Turpin
Professor of
Entomology
Purdue University
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Tis the Butter (Fly) Season
Did you ever wonder why butterflies are called butterflies? For one
thing, they fly, and that explains the last part of the name. That is the
same reason that many other insects such as dragonflies, fireflies,
lanternflies and dobsonflies have 'fly' in their names.
Even though these insects are called flies
they are not really flies, according to
scientists. Real flies are the insects that
are classified in the order Diptera. There
are hundreds of species of real flies in the
world. House flies, deer flies, black flies,
blow flies and mosquitoes are all real flies.
Peacock butterfly; photo by
Lewis Collard
So why do butterflies have the word butter
in their name? It apparently was partially
associated with the time that the first of these scale-winged creatures
appeared each year. At least in the temperate regions of the world, that
time is the early spring.
Early spring was historically known in English-speaking parts of the
world as the butter season. That is because new plant growth provided
forage for grazing mammals such as cows, goats and sheep. Humans
used milk from these animals to drink and make butter, so increasing
milk supplies during the spring resulted in the time period being called
the butter season. Hence, these insects were called flies of the butter
season - or butterflies. The German word for butterfly shows a similar
connection to milk. That word - Schmetterling - is based on the word for
cream.
Some people have suggested that the
yellow color of one of the first butterfly
species to appear in spring might have
contributed to the name as well. These
yellow butterflies are generally known as
alfalfa butterflies, because their caterpillars
feed on legumes, including alfalfa. They
are pest insects, but the butterflies are still
pretty. Their color could have been
Morpho butterfly
suggestive of homemade butter.
The name butterfly has not been an entirely adequate term for the one
type of insect that most people admire. To prove this point, more than
one cartoonist has produced a drawing of a stick of butter with wings to
represent a butterfly.
Butterflies, with their large wings and beautiful colors, flutter throughout
art, design, poetry and even music. So it is not surprising that a number
of terms have surfaced to describe this genre of insects as something
other than a product of a churn.
Leave it to the wordsmiths to come up with something better than
butterfly for this type of insect. Because of the color of both butterflies
and flowers, a comparison seems the thing to do. French lyric poet P.
D. E. Lebrun wrote, “The butterfly is a flying flower.” In like manner,
science-fiction writer R. H. Heinlein opined, “Butterflies are selfpropelled flowers.” In his poem, “The Butterfly,” J. B. Tabb described
these insects as, “Leafless, stemless, floating flower.” Robert Frost, in
his poem “Blue-butterfly Day,” referred to butterflies as “sky flakes” and
“flowers that fly.” Frost also connected butterflies and flowers in his
poem, “My Butterfly,” with these words: “thy emulous fond flowers.”
It has been suggested that one of the early common names for
butterflies might have actually been flutter-by. Such a term is
descriptive of the way butterflies fly, or at least the way they fly when
they are not in a hurry. Two unknown poets incorporated the flutter-by
idea in the following lines, “Butterflies go fluttering by” and “Flutter by,
butterfly, floating flower in the sky.”
Butterflies have also been called flappers.
To most of us the word flapper is
associated with the Roaring '20s when the
term was used to describe young women
of the time. These human flappers wore
short skirts and bobbed their hair, mostly
as a sign of rejection of the social
standards.
Flapper as a name for women apparently
is not related to use of the word to
describe butterflies. However, there is one
F.X. Leyendecker's "The
iconic image of that time period that
Flapper"
incorporates both the human and insect
flappers. This was a painting, “The
Flapper,” by F. X. Leyendecker. The image adorned a Life magazine
cover in 1922 and featured a flapper woman sporting antennae and
swallowtail butterfly wings.
I don’t know about you, but I kind of like the name butterfly. It sure
beats something like scale-winged, day-flying lepidopteran with
knobbed antennae - the way that scientists describe butterflies!
Writer: Tom Turpin
[email protected]
Editor: Olivia
Maddox
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