Today I saw the smallest butterfly I’ve ever seen in my life: the tiny Ceraunus Blue, Hemiargus ceraunus. Most blues, as this family of butterflies is known, are tiny, but I cannot convey to you the utter tininess of this thing. The tiny little stalk of dead weed it’s perched on looks gargantuan in the photo of it:
She’s a pretty little thing, though, (I say “she” because females are brown, males are gray) with two prominent dark spots on the leading edge of the forewing and one giant “peacock eye” on the hindwing (at least here in the southeast; apparently western forms have two peacock eyes back there).
Etymology
The species was named by Fabricius back in 1793. Argus was the famous giant with 100 eyes who was set by Hera to guard Io so that Zeus wouldn’t be able to approach her. Of course, he sent Hermes to hoodwink Argus, and the rest is history. Or myth. Or whatever.
Hemiargus, I assume, would mean half, so half an Argus would be something like 50 eyes. Not quite so many on this little lepidopteran, but still, it’s a nice genus name.
The species name, ceraunus, seems to be named after thunder and lightning, at least from the related words in the Century Dictionary online:
So a bolt-out-the-blue 50-eyed little butterfly, that’s what we have here.
This common butterfly feeds on the nectar of all kinds of weeds; the larval food plant is apparently legumes.