Blue Morpho wing, close
Morpho peleides
Blue Morpho · Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden · 7 February 2026
A Blue Morpho wing close enough to see the colour is not uniform, in the butterfly house at Fairchild. This is the great blue butterfly of the Central and South American rainforest, and the blue is built, not painted.
The colour comes in bands of slightly different blue and green along the wing veins. The underlying scale structure varies subtly across the wing, which is why the same species can look sapphire in one photograph and closer to turquoise in another taken moments apart. The scales are ridged like a roof, and the ridges are spaced at almost exactly the wavelength of blue light.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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