BUTTERFLIES OF THE INDIAN RIVER
Where the Bahamas vex the Gulf Stream so that the rich romance of its
violet blue is shoaled into an indignant green that is yet more lovely,
there is a grape-like bloom on both sea and sky. Standing on the islands
that bar the Indian River from the full tides, you may see this bloom
sweep in a purpling vapor from the sea up into a sapphire sky, which it
informs with an almost ruby iridescence at times. The gentle southeast
winds of mid-March have blown this bloom in from the sea and sky and
spread all the landscape of the southern East Coast with it, a pale
blue, smoke-like haze in whose aroma there is yet no pungency of smoke.
It is like the blue haze of Indian summer which often hangs the New
England hills with a violet indistinctness out of which all dreams might
well come true.
The road down Indian River winds sandily along the bluff always
southward toward the sun. On your left hand you glimpse the blue river
with the island a haze of deep blue on the horizon. It is a dreamy
world to the eastward, full of wild life. In the shallows schools of
fishes flash their silvery sides to the sun. Herons wait, patient in the
knowledge that the river will serve their dinner. The Florida great blue
in all his six-foot magnificence flies with a croak of disapprobation
only when you come too near. Here are the smaller blue herons, in family
groups. _Ardea wardi_ and _Ardea cœrulea_ are fortunate in having no
plumes which are desired of courtesans, else would they, in spite of all
law, have been shot off the earth as have the snowy egrets which once
whitened the Florida savannas with beauty. Yet both are beautiful birds,
and the young of the smaller heron rival the egrets in whiteness. It is
rather singular that a bird that is pure white when young should, on
reaching full maturity, so change color as to be at first taken by
naturalists for another variety, yet such is the case.
Further out in the shining river frolicsome mullet leap six feet in the
air, not as most fish do with a curving trajectory that brings them into
the water head first, but falling back broadside on the surface with a
spanking splash. Often a big fish will progress three times in the air
thus as if trying out the hop, skip, and a jump of athletic
competitions. Half a thousand feet out in the shallow water are the
spiles of abandoned docks. On these sit the cormorants, black and
ungainly, motionless for hours in the steep of the sun, again plunging
for a fish and flopping back to the perch to be greeted by most amazing
grunts from their companions. Lone pelicans sit slumping down into mere
bunches of sleepy feathers with mighty bills laid across the top. You
see brown-back gulls fishing and above them soaring a big bald eagle,
ready to rob cormorant, gull or pelican with the cheerful
indiscrimination of the overlord.
Such is the life that you glimpse through the open spaces as you fare
southward toward the sun. But much of the way the river is screened from
your view by dense growth of palmettos. In one spot a rubber tree has
twined its descending roots about a palmetto till it has crushed the
fibrous trunk to a debris of rotten wood and the roots have joined and
become a tree, the tree, while the palmetto that nourished it passes to
make the white sand fertile for the rootlets of the one-time parasite.
Here are hickory and shrubby magnolias and many forms of cactus. Some of
these climb the palmettos, vine-like, to spread the vivid scarlet of
their blossoms high among the fronds. These creeping cacti are like
creeping, thorny, jointed green snakes of a bad dream. The cherokee bean
sends out its crimson spikes of tube-like blooms from leafless stems,
roadside spurges show red involucres, and everywhere you
[Illustration:
“A rubber tree twined its roots about a palmetto till it crushed
the trunk to a debris of rotten wood”]
find the low-growing composite blooms of the plant which produces the
“Spanish needles,” seeds that are spear-like akenes to stab as you pass.
The white petals of this composite flower are no whiter than the wings
of the great Southern white butterfly that delights in feeding on this
pretty, daisy-like blossom. As the summer comes on, myriads of Southern
white butterflies make the ridge their hostelry and the road southward
their highway. Already they make the road a place of snowflakes,
scurrying on March winds all hither and thither. They are as white as
snow in flight, the tiny marking of black on the margin of the primaries
serving only to accentuate the whiteness. So when they light and fold
the wings the greenish tint of the secondaries beneath is only that
reflected light which becomes green in some snow shadows. They serve to
make the day cool while yet the sun is fervid, and to walk toward it
even at a moderate pace is to perspire freely. Just as snowflakes during
a white storm scurry together in companionship and alight in groups
beneath some sheltering shrub, so toward nightfall when the level sun
just tops the ridge to the westward these Southern snowflakes dance
together and light in drifts beneath some overhanging shrub which
shelters them from the wind. There hundreds wait for the reviving warmth
of the next morning’s sun.
Stranger than this is the passing of what seem marshaled hosts along
this Indian River road toward the south. The exceptional cold of the
winter has kept the imagos in chrysalid and the rush is not yet on. But
the time will come soon when each day uncountable millions will pass.
Whether this is continued westward into the interior of the State I
cannot say, nor do I know whence they come nor whither they go. Perhaps
some West Coast observer will be able to state whether this flight goes
to the south there or whether the vast numbers round the southern end of
the peninsula and go north again. Last November this same southern
movement was noticeable in the northern portion of the State, about
Jacksonville. In its aggregate it must reach a number of butterflies
which might well stagger the imagination. Butterflies fly easiest
against a gentle breeze. One attacked will go off down the wind at
express train speed, but as soon as his fright is over you will find him
beating to windward again. They hunt, both for food and for mates, by
scent. Therefore against the wind is their only logical course.
The trade winds blow gently all summer long, and most of the time during
the winter, from the southeast. Hence the butterflies beating against it
come to the coast line and follow it down, swarming the Indian River
road with their
[Illustration: “The river is screened from your view by dense growth of
palmettos”]
whiteness. What becomes of them all when they get into the lower end of
Dade County I cannot say.
But if _Pieris monuste_ and his kin of the Southern whites is most
conspicuous here because of numbers, there are a half-score other
beauties which will soon attract your attention. Of these the largest
are Papilios, the various varieties of swallowtail. Here is cresphontes,
fresh from some orange grove, as large as one’s hand, and of vivid
contrast in gold and yellow. To be watched for is his veritable twin
brother, _Papilio thoas_, just a little more widely banded with gold.
_Papilio thoas_ feeds upon the orange and other citrus fruit leaves as
does cresphontes, but he is the butterfly of the hotter regions to the
south, where he replaces cresphontes. Occasionally he has been found in
the hot lands of Texas, why not in southern Florida? The thought gives a
new fillip to the interest with which I watch. The next turn in the road
may bring him. Time was when cresphontes was found only among the orange
groves of the Southern States. Steadily he has been extending his range
northward until specimens have been captured in the neighborhood of
Pittsburg, and one has since been reported from Ontario.
Cresphontes and thoas are the largest and showiest of their tribe to be
found in the country. With them flitting as madly and erratically is
apt to be _Papilio asterias_, also a symphony in black and yellow, with
blue trimmings. The asterias is born of a grub that thrives on members
of the parsley family, and you may find his brilliant black and
greenish-yellow stripes on almost any carrot bed, North or South. Poke
him and he will most strangely put out two horns much like a moth’s
antennæ, from some concealed sheath in his head, and at the same time
produce a musky smell wherewith to confound you. Asterias ranges from
Maine to Florida in the summer time and westward to the Mississippi
River. I have found him nowhere more plentiful than here.
In and out of the tangle of the thicket with asterias and cresphontes
pass two other Papilios, palamedes and troilus. Palamedes might be
described as a larger and more dignified asterias, being nearly the size
of cresphontes, but having wider spaces of clear black on the upper
sides of his wings. His grub feeds upon the laurels and _Magnolia
glauca_, and the butterfly has been known to visit southern New England
though his usual range is from Virginia south. You will easily know
palamedes from cresphontes, even on the wing, by the lack of yellow in
his coloring. Especially is this true of a glimpse from beneath.
Cresphontes rivals the sun in his gold when seen from below, palamedes
is dark beneath with the after wings as gorgeous as a peacock’s tail
with crowded eye-spots of orange and blue. It is rather interesting to
note that, handsome as most butterflies are on the upper sides of their
wings the under sides far surpass these in gorgeousness, as a rule. I
have often wondered why.
Last of the Papilios I have met on the ridge I note with satisfaction
good old _Papilio troilus_ of Linnæus. There are many names with which
one conjures in the butterfly world,--Scudder, Holland, Edwards, Cramer,
Grote, Boisduval, Strecker, Stoll, Doubleday, and a score of others, but
none that so touches one’s heart as does that of the Father of Natural
History. To him came the beautiful things of the young world and
received their names, as the animals are fabled to have passed before
Adam and Eve. Surely none of the creatures that he named were more
beautiful than this butterfly. In him the flaunting yellows are not
found. Instead on the black foundation are spotted and stippled most
wonderful shades of peacock blue touched modestly with a spot of crimson
for each wing. Here is a fine restraint in coloring that shows harmony
rather than contrast and puts the more gaudily painted members of the
genus to shame. In the grub stage the favorite food of _Papilio troilus_
is the leaves of the sassafras and spicebush, food through which any
caterpillar might well grow into beauty and good taste.
These big swallow-tail butterflies certainly add romance and beauty to
the road that leads sunward down the Indian River. At times, in certain
favored spots the air is full of their rich beauty, now hovering in your
very face, again dashing madly into the depths of the jungle or
vanishing in mid-air as all butterflies so well know how to do. In the
grub stage it is not difficult to know on just what they feed. In the
butterfly form I am satisfied that during the first few days after
emerging from the chrysalis they are so busy mating that they do not
find time to feed. At this stage they dash most wildly and nervously to
and fro, seeking always and never quiet for a moment. Later the mood
changes and you may find them clinging to some favorite flower so drunk
with honey and perfume that you may pick them off with the fingers.
The world just now is full of orange blossoms and heavy with their odor.
The honey from their yellow hearts is to be had for the asking and the
bees are so busy that the trees fairly roar with the beat of their
wings. Yet if I were butterfly or bee I should pass the heavy-scented
groves for a flower which just now blooms profusely on the ridge. That
is the Carolina Laurel-Cherry, commonly called at the South, “mock
orange,” This has indeed a lance-ovate, glossy, deep green orange-like
leaf, but the bloom reminds me more of that of the clethra. Like the
clethra too it has a most delectable perfume, dainty and sweet as
anything that grows in the South and far surpassing in light and
seductive aroma the heavy perfume of the groves. The odor of this shrub
floats like pleasant fancies all along the dusty ridge road and
continually wooes all that pass,--insects and men alike.
Nor are the Papilios all the bright-winged butterflies of the ridge.
Here flies the zebra, his long, almost dragonfly-like wings rippled with
black and yellow bars that seem to flow over them as he flies like
dapple of sunlight on a black pool. The zebra is a lazy fellow. Compared
with most other butterflies he fairly saunters along. I fancy that if
one of those long-tailed skippers, or even one of the silver-spotted,
that both frequent the same groves, were to find him on their mad track
they would telescope him.
The Papilios seem to be the butterflies of the higher air levels. You
are more apt to find the zebras flying head high and the skippers still
lower. Perhaps this usual difference of air strata is why those
collisions do not take place. Lower still, flitting among the very herbs
at your feet are other, beautiful if smaller, varieties. Out of the
shadows of the foliage come most awkwardly the spangled nymphs, pleased
with the sunlight, yet scared in a moment into fleeing awkwardly back
again. Of these I note commonest _Neonympha phocion_, the Georgian
satyr, singularly marked underneath with rough ovals of iron rust in
which are blue-pupiled eyes with a yellow iris. Here, too, is _Neonympha
eurytus_, as common North as South.
There are many more butterflies that one may see in a day’s tramp down
river in this enchanted land. This day has left with me, as one most
vivid impression, the memory of a little patch of trailing blackberry
vines whose white blooms are larger and more rose-like than those of
Northern hillsides. Upon the patch had descended a snow squall of white
butterflies till you could not tell petals from wings, or if it was
flowers that took flight or butterflies that unfolded from the fragrant
buds. Other spots were dear with tiny forester moths, most fairy-like of
thumbnail creatures, the flutter of checkered black and white on their
wings making them most noticeable. Once out of the deep shade of the
thicket a painted bunting flew and lighted in full view, showing the
rich blue of his iridescent head and neck, the flashing green of his
back and wing coverts, the red of his under parts. I know of no other
bird whose colors are at once so gaudy and so harmonious. He was like a
flash of priceless jewels. No wonder he keeps these colors in the
shelter of the thickets as much as possible. The hawk that catches a
painted bunting must think he is about to dine on a diadem.
So through all the vivid warmth of the long day flit these bright
creatures of the sun, and the mysterious bloom of tropic seas blows in
with the wind that sings in the palmettos. All tempt one to fare farther
and farther south in search of greater enchantment.