Kamehameha butterfly


The Kamehameha butterfly is one of the two species of butterfly endemic to Hawaii, the other is Udara blackburni. The Hawaiian name is pulelehua. This is today a catch-all native term for all butterflies; its origin seems to be pulelo "to float" or "to undulate in the air" + lehua, "reddish," or "rainbow colored," probably due to the predominant color of the Metrosideros polymorpha flower: an animal that floats through the air, from one lehua to another. Alternatively, it is called lepelepe-o-Hina - roughly, "Hina's fringewing" - which is today also used for the introduced monarch butterfly.
The Kamehameha butterfly was named the state insect of Hawaii in 2009, due to the work of a group of fifth-graders from Pearl Ridge Elementary. These 5th graders proposed the butterfly as the state insect to various legislators as a project for Gifted and Talented.

Description

The caterpillars feed on the leaves of plants in the family Urticaceae, especially those of māmaki but also ōpuhe, ākōlea, olonā, and maoloa. Adults eat the sap of koa trees.

Taxonomy

It is named after the royal House of Kamehameha; the last king of this lineage, Kamehameha V, had died in 1872, a short time before this species was described. The specific name tameamea is an old-fashioned and partially wrong transcription of "Kamehameha". The Hawaiian language has no strict distinction between the voiceless alveolar plosive and voiceless velar plosive; use varies from island to island, but today, "k" is used as the standard transliteration. The voiceless glottal transition "h" is distinct and should always be pronounced - for example, "aloha" is correct whereas "aloa" is a wrong pronunciation. Thus, while "Tamehameha" would be a legitimate transcription, "Tameamea" is not.