Transparent Quartet. Glasswing Butterfly, Greta oto, on Hibiscus, Utrecht Botanical Gardens, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Torrential rain in the Utrecht Botanical Gardens yesterday had me seek shelter in the pleasant glass houses and the Butterfly collection. Here on a wilting Hibiscus are four of those wonderful Glasswing Butterflies.
Once their genus was Ithomia and it was under the name Ithomia oto that William Chapman Hewitson (1806-1878) described this one in the early 1850s. The genus was renamed in 1934 by Arthur Francis Hemming (1893-1964) and our beauties now go by Greta oto. They're transparent because they lack the colorful scales of other Butterflies.
Transparent Quartet. Glasswing Butterfly, Greta oto, on Hibiscus, Utrecht Botanical Gardens, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Torrential rain in the Utrecht Botanical Gardens yesterday had me seek shelter in the pleasant glass houses and the Butterfly collection. Here on a wilting Hibiscus are four of those wonderful Glasswing Butterflies.
Once their genus was Ithomia and it was under the name Ithomia oto that William Chapman Hewitson (1806-1878) described this one in the early 1850s. The genus was renamed in 1934 by Arthur Francis Hemming (1893-1964) and our beauties now go by Greta oto. They're transparent because they lack the colorful scales of other Butterflies.