If there's one thing I love almost as much (perhaps even more) than a blue flower, it's a blue butterfly: from the smallest of small blues to the largest of large blues, and including the common blue, holly blue and the brilliant Adonis blue, I find them all extraordinarily beautiful to behold (even if only ever seen in photographs).
I think my favourite, however, is the silver-studded blue (Plebejus argus), found gaily dancing amongst the heather during the long summer months and befriending the black ants that protect their eggs and larval young. Although the females are far less splendid than the male - blueness giving way to a drab brown colour - they do retain the distinct silver spots on their hindwings.
Of course, numbers of both sexes have undergone a major decline during recent decades across most of its (restricted) range in the UK, thanks to all the usual causes; habitat loss, agricultural practice, landscape development, etc.
Of course, numbers of both sexes have undergone a major decline during recent decades across most of its (restricted) range in the UK, thanks to all the usual causes; habitat loss, agricultural practice, landscape development, etc.
This, to me at least, is a genuinely depressing fact. I really don't think I would want to live in a world without blue butterflies, blue flowers, blue birds, and what Lawrence terms the blueness of the Greater Day that, in a sense, these things embody and symbolise, existing as they do beyond the everyday beauty of things that belong solely to the yellow sun.
See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Flying-Fish', Appendix II, St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Brian Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
For a sister post on the blue flower, click here.
For a sister post on the blue flower, click here.
