As I'm sure you've noticed, Gentle Readers, I have no special expertise to write these things. This is a blog. I'm documentng a learning process. I look at the list, start to set up a post, type "Graphium Alebion" for the title, and think "Have I ever seen the word alebion before? What am I going to learn this week?"
Photo by Byulong.
Oh, not always. We have featured a couple of butterflies with which I'm familiar. But this series is showing me what a tiny proportion of the world's butterflies I've ever seen, and how much bigger and more confusing other groups of lifeforms--flowers, moths, fishes--are than butterflies, and what a big, complicated, diverse world this is, and how insanely hubristic it is for anyone to think they can dictate policy to all of it.
The surprising thing is how much of this information is not on Wikipedia. People are publishing books created by rewriting Wikipedia articles, and yet, although there's enough information about some of these butterfly species to generate a full-length, fully illustrated article, there's no such article on Wikipedia. (Graphium alebion is typical. Lots of photos of living alebion are available online; Wikipedia displays only an old plate of paintings that doesn't even clearly identify which painting was meant to be of alebion. A sketchy description of wing colors--of which subspecies, and what's the size?--is the only text on the page. Once again this web site is going to pull together more data than Wikipedia.)
And one day in an unrelated search I read the current Wikipedia article about a bird species. A lot of people know and love this bird, and had contributed to a thorough, informative, well documented article that was a joy to read...except for a nasty little note someone had pinned to it, saying it was a long read and birds were "of low importance."
They are? To whom? Not to me! How are we going to feel motivated to save the Earth if we don't even know what other lifeforms share our corners of it with us? I think natural history is of high importance. I think nobody should get into grade seven without knowing the names of all the frequently observed lifeforms found within, say, fifty miles of their school.
I think we need more True Greens writing and editing Wikipedia.
End of rant. On to the butterfly itself and what I'm learning about it.
First of all, since its name looks like a typo, who or what was Alebion? Unrelated to the old Roman name for Britain, Alebion was a minor local deity in Greek and Reoman mythology, said to be a son of Poseidon though also said to preside over a section of land in Italy.
The butterfly is found in China, one of those countries that have lagged behind in documenting their unique lifeforms. For this reason the IUCN says cautiously that its conservation status, exact habitat, and the nature of any threats it may be facing, are unknown. A subspecies chungiyanus is found on Taiwan, and some sources mention other subspecies or "aberrant forms," but Google isn't showing information about their distinctive features. Even whether females look different from males seems to be unknown.
Because the Swallowtails are so attractive, one Eastern European source says, many are reared commercially for sale to "collectors." Graphium alebion in particular, because of its association with fruit tree blossoms, is found fading and decomposing in frames sold as "Wedding White" butterflies. Digital photography should soon make this type of trade obsolete.
Photo by Xiaodoudou, documenting that it flies in early spring and pollinates fruit trees. The color is sometimes described as yellow, though most of the photographs I'm finding show it as white, with black stripes and pale orange spots on the hind wings.
Eggs are little white beads, laid by ones on the undersides of leaves.
Photo by Chong at gbif.org..
The caterpillar looks like a miniature pickle with small, harmless black bristles scattered over a leaf-green surface. Being a Swallowtail, it has a humpbacked shaped containing an osmeterium.
Photo by Yzcitic_Zj.
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