purple emperor
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English[edit]
Noun[edit]
purple emperor (plural purple emperors)
- A large, dark brown and white (female), or purple and white (male) butterfly, Apatura iris, of the family Nymphalidae.
- 1827, Abel Ingpen, Instructions for Collecting, Rearing, and Preserving British Insects[1], page 36:
- A simple method will often bring them down even in their most rapid flight, and has been successfully employed in taking the Purple Emperor butterfly, (Apatura Iris,) namely, to throw up a stonr or piece of tile before them, which they will often fly down with, and alight on the ground, and are then easily captured.
- 1907, Edward Thomas, British Country Life in Spring and Summer: The Book of the Open Air[2], page 26:
- Deep in the southern oakwoods in July the great Purple Emperors hold court round the airy crests of the boughs, amid a silence so songless and solemn that the rustle of their own high, flashing wings may sometimes be heard in the sunshine above the murmur of omnipresent insect life that is the warp and woof of the stillness.
- 2016, James Lowen, A Summer of British Wildlife[3], page 120:
- Purple emperors are an exquisite morass of contradictions: disdainful of human company yet undisturbed by it; regally garbed yet partial to faecal feasts.
Translations[edit]
butterfly
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