Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 9, Number 5, 1 May 1992 — Naturally Hawaiian [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Naturally Hawaiian

by Patrick Ching artist/ environmentalist

Dancing in the wind

While hiking through I Hawaii's wilderness I trails, a joyful sight to I behold is that of a I Kamehameha butterfly I dancing in the wind I above the shrubs. With its bright redI orange wings and black ■ veins. the Kamehameha

butterfly looks very mueh like the introduced Monarch butterfly, although the Monarch is slightly larger. The Kamehameha butterfly ean also be identified by the spots on its wings.The spots are bright white on the females and orange on the males. Though there are literally hundreds of native moths in Hawai'i, there are only two native butterflies: the Kamehameha and the smaller, bluish-gray butterfly Udara blackburni. The Hawaiian name for the Kamehameha butterfly is pulelehua whieh may be loosely translated as "spirit of the lehua blossom."

The favorite foods of the Kamehameha caterpillar include the leaves of the nahue mamaki and olana. Adult butterflies feast on the sap that seeps out of certain trees, such as the native koa

Butterflies are especially attracted to fermented sap and they ean get very drunk on it. (That's all we need — a bunch of drunken butterflies crashing into things !) It is not uneommon to see butterflies sipping from mud puddles on the ground. This behavior is called "puddling" and it is a way that the butterft; gets salt and other minerals to nourish itself.

The next time you are in an upland forest, keep an eye out for this splendidly colored insect, for it will certainly brighten your day. Fact: The Kamehameha butterfly was the first butterfly in the world to adorn a postage stamp. The two-cent stamp was printed in 1891 and featured Queen Lili'uokalani wearing a Kamehameha butterfly as a head ornament.