Joann Merritt's Essays

Creative Collective Nouns For Butterflies
By The Merritts - September, 1988

On a recent Midnat field trip I commented on the numerous butterflies Don and I had seen that week. We saw Crescents at the south end of Soda Lake, Sleepy Oranges and Common Checkered Skippers at Harris’, Checkered Whites at Walton’s and clumps of Reakirt’s Blues around the mud puddles at Buchanan. Jim Henderson said surely there must be a better collective noun for butterflies than clump! Now I can recognize a challenge, so I began thinking, searching for a perfect word - hard work! Then an idea came to me from a calendar Frances gave me a few years ago. It had an unusual collective noun for each month’s bird - an Exaltation of Larks, a Siege of Herons, a Rafter of Turkeys, etc., so why not a name for each species of butterflies? With assistance from Don, I have compiled this list of “Creative Collective Nouns for Butterflies”.

A ROYAL ASSEMBLY of Queens, Monarchs, Empresses and Emperors

A GOLDEN SILENCE of Cloudless Sulphurs

A LULLABY of Sleepy Oranges

A BLUES CONCERT of Reakirt’s and Pygmys

A CHARM of Wood Nymphs

A QUILT of Bordered Patches

A CONGREGATION of Sisters

A PUNCTUATION of Questionmarks

A STYLING SALON of Hairstreaks

A HUMIDOR of Pipevine Swallowtails

A STATE of Buckeyes

A CONSTELLATION of Goatweeds

A TROOP of Dogfaces

A KINDERGARTEN of Skippers

A GANG of Alfalfas (For those too young to know or those too old to remember, Alfalfa was a boy in a comedy entitled “Our Gang”)

A BOARD of Checkerspots, Checkered Whites and Common Checkered Skippers

A TOOLBOX of Crescents

A STY of Snouts

A WAKE of Mourning Cloaks

A GAY GATHERING of Variegated Fritillaries

A BROTHEL of Painted Ladies

If you have accepted all of these collective nouns, then here’s the last one for you:

A GULLIBILITY of Swallowtails

P.S. The Merritts recently received an anonymous letter which read "I was walking in a field and saw numerous yellow butterflies on a cow patty. Was that a TURD of Sulphurs?"

My answer to that question is: The collective noun TOOLBOX of Crescents is in first place, the BROTHEL of Painted Ladies is in second place, and your TURD of Sulphurs is, of course, in turd place. Do you suppose anonymous is Jim Henderson?