Logo courtesy of Rebecca Richman, protected by copyright, see www.studiodune.com.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Blackberry Summer  
an essay on butterflies
 

written by Nancy Stranahan, August 12, 2010

Photos as follows: Blackberry Flower & Red-spotted Purple by Larry Henry; Open Questionmark, Giant Swallowtail, and Tiger Swallowtails on Joe Pye by John Howard; Folded Questionmark by Badjoby from Wickapedia; Black Swallowtail caterpillar on Queen Anne's Lace by Jerry Dalrymple; Monarch chrysalis from easttenneseewildflowers.com; Maturing Giant Swallowtail caterpillar by Tim Pohlar

 

 

 

           The Arc has certainly been well-watered this season. From April through mid-July the rains came to our corner of southern Ohio and lingered. Summer brought dazzling hot sunny days. Brief interludes of low brooding clouds dropped curtains of white water. By mid May, the rolling grasslands were as green and bucolic as a first grader’s crayon drawing. Clones of blackberry flowers lit up the fields like miniature apple trees, so heavy with bright white flowers one couldn’t see the vines that bore them. All my life I’ve heard the mythic tales of summer blackberries from childhoods long past, but the shriven seedy fruits I was familiar with each August bore no resemblance to my Mother’s fond memories of filling buckets with sweet juicy fruit. I had never  seen, however, blackberry flowers quite as prolific as those before me. Maybe this summer would be different.

 

By June, everyone in our local community was busy raking wild black raspberries off  heavily loaded briers – a much earlier and dependable crop --  carrying gallons of berries home for cakes and jams. On my first visit to the fencerow, before the burgeoning fruit weighed the vines to the ground, I shared my early berries with a wild box turtle at my feet, who grasped them with the same eagerness as my own grateful hand. The raspberries were so bountiful you could even buy homemade raspberry cobbler at the truckstop for dessert, following a traditional local meal of chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans with bacon.

 

I digress. My intention was to talk about butterflies.

 

You see, this is the year. A year not only for berries, but for butterflies, too. We might not experience a summer like this again in southern Ohio for another ten years.

 

In July, driving through the heart of the Highlands Sanctuary on Cave Road was a start and stop affair. Entering the slanted sunbeams that illuminated the dark forested road, a moving car would send clouds of Questionmarks into the air from where they had been puddling on the mineralized soils. With their wings closed, Questionmarks resembled dead brown leaves, except for a gleaming glyph of metallic silver in the shape of a question mark on their hind wing. These butterflies wear on their wings an eternal cosmic inquiry for which there is no final answer.  When their wings delicately spread open, revealed are rich hues of dark amber, with a shocking edging of lavender violet.

 

Silver and gold. Of all the animals, it seems only  insects have acquired the alchemical capacity to turn green plant matter into precious metal, or so their rarest hues appear. The Questionmark's glyph shinese like silver, but when the monarch butterfly forms it’s sea-green chrysalis, it  sews itself in with a suture of gleaming gold.

 

Walking down Cave Road is more satisfying than driving, allowing one to enjoy the full bouquet of forest butterflies, and presenting a botany lesson in the process. The tame little Hackberry Emperors alight on exposed arms and legs, taking a free ride while lapping up perspiring salts.  Zebra Swallowtails turn pawpaw leaves into slow-flying adults, their extraordinarily long tails draped behind them like royal robes as they dreamily cross the road. Redspotted Purples slowly open and close their wings on the open roadway, their bodies the pure extract of wild black cherry leaves. Spicebush Butterfly caterpillars depend on their namesake, while Black Swallowtails metamorphosize Queen Anne's Lace and other members of the parsley family. Tiger Swallowtails, the most regal of all, have their beginnings in the

canopies of tulip poplars and cherries.

 

What is this special kinship we feel for the butterflies? What in our DNA sequence causes us to smile at their flight? What evolutionary advantage is there in our joy, or in the creation of their overly-large floppy paper-thin wings? The wings of a common fly, in comparison, represent compact technical brilliance. With their high-speed wing rotations, flies can make last-minute ninety-degree turns and are speedy enough to overcome a running man. You know their dexterity first-hand if you have ever tried to outrun a deerfly or swat a housefly with your bare hands. Butterfly anatomy, by comparison, looks like a failed 2^nd grade science project on aerodynamics, with wings composed of 50% whimsy and watercolors, and 50% tissue paper and paper clips. But who could be so impoverished in spirit to even think of swatting a butterfly?

 

Perhaps spirit is the magnet that attracts us to butterflies. Maybe our kinship has nothing to do with science at all. Spirit, it could be argued, is to earthly limitation what butterfly flight is to gravity, what play is to work, art to science, infinity to boundaries, laughter in the face of sorrow, and wisdom to lost innocence. Spirit and butterflies share a lot in common. They are both improbable, playfully defiant, and delicately strong. Butterflies are like the souls of children turned inside out.

 

Two weeks ago, the largest butterfly in Eastern United States appeared in my backyard, fluttering around my potted plants. Talk about improbable! What was it

doing here? Giant Swallowtail caterpillars are known to eat only plants belonging to the citrus family Rutaceae. In the wilds of Ohio this family is restricted to Prickly Ash (a great reason to grow this native shrub in your yard), and Wafer Ash, a graceful but uncommon understory tree. I have never seen either one of these woody plants anywhere close to the Sanctuary.  But the Swallowtail came back the next day to the exact same place, and the day thereafter as well.  Then a dear friend pointed out the obvious. The Giant Swallowtail was not fluttering around any old potted plant, but a special gift I had recently received, the perennial Dictamnus albus, known as Gas Plant or Burning Bush, native to southern Europe. The Swallowtail wasn’t nectaring, it was laying tiny amber eggs! I rushed to the internet, which  confirmed my suspicions. Gas plant was indeed a member of the Citrus family, and my single potted plant had lured a female into my yard.

 

A few days later the little caterpillars hatched out, and quickly turned into the most perfect imitations of bird droppings imaginable, right down to the powdery blob of white uric acid on one end, and the fibrous dark solid wastes on the other. Their mimicry was so well done, that combined with their likely sequestration of plant toxins, they apparently didn’t feel the need to hide from predators. The caterpillars flaunted their strange bodies in full view, curving their bodies in the "j" shape of bird excrement, their mid-sections gleaming as if still wet from creation.  As the caterpillars grew in size, their bird dropping mimicry became less convincing, and their bodies began to express a more serpentine strategy that was just as unappetizing. These little guys definitely did NOT look like food. 

 

In early August  I headed toward Shawnee State Forest to meet a good friend and botanist. “The swallowtails are spectacular down there this year,” he forewarned me. “Yeah, they are awesome up here, too,” I said. “You’ll see,” he replied. When I arrived I couldn’t believe my eyes. We drove up a back road lined with mounds of Joe Pye Weed. Around me weren’t dozens, as I had expected, but hundreds and hundreds of swallowtails. Some flower heads had six or seven butterflies on them alone. Most of them were Tiger Swallowtails, known for their distinctive flight pattern of flapping their wings for short periods of time, and then sail-gliding. When I made the smallest move, they all softly spiraled into the sky at once. Surrounded by this enlivened air, I  felt the resurrection of joy, and fought the impulse to abandon the rest of the afternoon to flying kites and writing poetry.

 

Later that afternoon I stopped at a friend’s and chatted under the shaded roof of her front porch. The details of our easy conversation have already faded in memory, but I’ll never forget seeing her dark silhouette against a bright backdrop of wild sunflowers that were covered with dozens of fluttering Silver Spangled Fritillaries; while Commas, Questionmarks, and Hackberry Emperors haloed her head and tasted her bare shoulders.

 

Departing along her driveway, I nearly stepped on a tiny puddle of Tiger Swallowtails. Sixteen of the creatures fluttered heavenward. When they passed by my head and dispersed into the forest, I recalled the poem by Polish writer, Wislawa Szymborska, simply titled Sky, the first and last stanza which are shared with you here:
 

The sky is where we should have started.
Window without a sill, without a frame, without a pane.
An opening wide open, with nothing
beyond it.

 …

 Dividing earth and sky
is not the right way
to think about this wholeness.
It only allows one to live
at a more precise address---
were I be searched for
I’d be found much faster.
My distinguishing marks
are rapture and despair. ¹

July came and so did the blackberries. They turned out to be sweet, plump, and good, just like my Mother had remembered them.

As I write the butterflies are still in record numbers outside my window. I hope you get a chance to go outside and see them.

 1. We thank John Beeker for generously gifting the Arc with Wislawa Symborska’s book of poems, titled Miracle Fair. Masterfully translated into English by Joanna Trzeciak, we highly recommend this book be added to your personal collection.