View allAll Photos Tagged paste
Paste Up by Hilary Cresp (www.essayer.com.au).
I think the artist is very talented and yes, she is my sister.
These Atalas have just hatched! And they will hang till they dry and strengthen and then fly to a nearby nectar source to gain energy and vitality. So rare to see Atalas hatch and even more rare to see so many hatching at the same time!
The Atala butterfly is strange to photograph. The colored areas are vague at the margins so the color looks like it has been dusted on a bit carelessly. But look at its marvelous tones below... deep velvety blue, bright sky blue and a brilliant red orange! It is very fast moving so getting a shot at all is always a thrill! Usually looks like a vibrant patch of astounding flying color and it's gone.
Interdependencies in nature once again. This marvelous creature owes its life to the Florida Coontie which was almost wiped out after being the money crop of the first Florida pioneers. Without the Coontie, this beauty will be gone. Coontie is the host plant and the only plant the Atala can lay its eggs on. The short, woody stem and rootstock of the Coontie grows almost completely underground and produces a terminal crown of stiff, evergreen, pinnate leaves up to 3 feet long. The brown, fleshy, erect, female or seed-bearing cones are pendent when mature. Coontie plants contain a natural toxin, which atala larvae accumulate in their bodies and use to repel birds. Without coontie, adult atalas have no place to lay eggs. No eggs means no new generations. .
Wild coonties’ demise began with starch: Long before Europeans arrived in Florida, Native Americans used coontie as a source of starch. Coontie, in fact, is a Seminole word that means “bread” or “white root” because the roots can be made into arrowroot flour. The Tequesta Indians thrived in the Arch Creek area. The oak hammock near the creek provided shade, edible plants, nuts and berries. Nearby Biscayne Bay provided shellfish, shark, manatee and turtle. North of the hammock were pine flatlands which sheltered the all-important coontie plant (Zamia integrifolia).
Around 1858 two ambitious pioneers used the creek and its natural bridge as a site for a coontie starch mill. These early entrepreneurs learned how to clean the poisonous roots and dammed up the waterway under the bridge diverting the flow through a sluice they carved out of a solid limestone bank. The water turned a wooden wheel attached to a nail-studded grinder which mashed the cootie roots into a paste-like pulp which was soaked and strained to remove any remaining poison. Laid out in wooden racks, the starch dried quickly and the sun bleached it white. In the early 1900s, several commercial factories in South Florida processed coontie roots for the manufacture of arrowroot biscuits. Unfortunately the coontie was overused and the Atala had no place to lay its eggs. In recent years, there is a great effort to reestablish coontie and as a result the Atala is coming back! And coming back abundantlyl!
Atala Eumaeus
Urban Habitat, Biscayne Park, FL