Apollo butterfly
Parnassius apollo
— Where the name comes from
Both words come from Delphi. Parnassus is the sacred mountain above the sanctuary, home of the Muses; Apollo is the god whose oracle stood there. So solemn a name for a butterfly is explained by the altitude it lives at — it flies over mountain screes, where the light is sharp and the air cold — and by the red spots ringed with black on the hindwings, which the first describers read as drops of blood on white.
— Facts
- Group
- Insects · Insecta
- Order
- Butterflies and moths
- Habitat
- Rocky slopes and mountain grassland between 800 and 2,500 metres
- Range
- The mountains of Europe and western Asia
- Size
- 7–8.5 cm wingspan
- Diet
- Nectar; houseleeks and stonecrops as a caterpillar
- Lifespan
- About a month as an adult
— Characteristics
- 01
The wings are partly transparent, with sparse scales.
- 02
The caterpillar eats only rock succulents: sedum and sempervivum.
- 03
It flies slowly and glides, which is unusual for a day-flying butterfly.
— What sets it apart
After mating, the male applies to the female a plate of hardened substance that seals her genital opening and prevents anyone else from mating with her: it is called a sphragis, Greek for “seal”, and is visible to the naked eye as a pale scale beneath the abdomen. It is one of the few butterflies in which the phenomenon is so conspicuous. It lives in populations isolated from one mountain to the next, which has made it fragile: it was one of the first butterflies in the world protected by law, and in many Alpine regions it has vanished with the abandonment of pasture, which has let the forest close over the screes where its sedum grows.
