Emerald Swallowtail
Papilio palinurus · Butterflies
Emerald Swallowtail
Carlsbad, 7 March 2026
An Emerald Swallowtail in the butterfly house, a butterfly of the rainforests of Southeast Asia, from Burma to the Philippines, where it flies fast through the canopy and is rarely seen still.
The green is structural rather than pigmented. Each scale is a tiny curved mirror that reflects yellow from one angle and blue from another, and the two mix in the eye to read as emerald. Cut into the scale under magnification it shows concave facets, closer to the mechanism behind a butterfly's iridescent blue than to any green pigment.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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