May 25 2023 - Cecropias and Lunas

 

Yesterday was a day full of activities.  The most unusual one was heading to Niagara Falls to pick up a parcel for my brother.  It was 20 Cecropia cocoons and 80 Luna moth eggs.   Cecropia moths are big, beautiful and boldly coloured.  They are silk moths with reddish bodies and black to brown wings surrounded by bands of white, red, and tan. With a wingspan of five to seven inches (13 to 18 centimeters), the cecropia moth is the largest moth found in North America. Of course, it is a moth, so it is nocturnal.  Being native to our area, the larvae eat ash, birch, box elder, alder, elm, maple, whip cherry, plum, willow apple and lilac.  They are very big, so you can hear them eating.  While this is not my picture, it may be that one will be showing up soon.  And what about the Luna moth?  It is a large, silk moth,(Actuals luna)  like the Cecropia, and is a bright green, with red edges, and a white body.  It has huge feathery antennae and a white body. Its caterpillars are also green. Its typical wingspan is roughly 114 mm (4.5 in), but wingspans can exceed 178 mm (7.0 in), ranking the species as one of the larger moths in North America. Across Canada, it has one generation per year, with the winged adults appearing in late May or early June, whereas farther south it will have two or even three generations per year, the first appearance as early as March in southern parts of the United States.   If you want to attract Lunas to create a moth garden, grow these:  American beech, American chestnut, black cherry, black walnut, hickory, paper birch, red maple, smooth sumac, sweetgum, white oak and willow.   The Cecropias will be coming out of their cocoons in the next few days.  The Lunas will hatch out in 14 days.   And our picture comes from the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory - look at the dozen butterflies on this side of the tree trunk. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

June 15 2020 - Moon vs Luna

Where does the name Moon come from?  Why do the moons around other planets have names and ours is just Moon? Can you imagine finding out that Jupiter has four moons?  That's what Galileo discovered in 1610 - he'd only gotten a telescope in 1609.  Then astronomers discovered five moons around Saturn.  All of these newly discovered moons were given names to identify them -typically named for Greek myths - Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.  The name Moon comes from Old English: "mōna, which (like all its Germanic cognates) stems from Proto-Germanic *mēnōn, which in turn comes from Proto-Indo-European *mēnsis "month" (from earlier *mēnōt, genitive *mēneses) which may be related to the verb "measure" (of time). Am I right to imagine that the name stuck because things were written down and archived in libraries and so we have a reference.  Ancient peoples had names for the Moon before the Romans and Greeks, but their culture and languages are lost to us.  I wonder what they would have called it. Would it have been named in relation to time similar to the  Romans and Greeks? It is Luna in Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Russian and Bulgarian.  Why don't we call it Luna?  I assume the answer has to do with how old 'Old English' is.  The many groups that made up Anglo Saxons had various dialects that are referred to as Old English - around 550 - 1066.  Then Middle English evolved from the 8th to the 12th century.  Then we're into Early Modern English 1500 to 1700.  Galileo lived from 1564 to 1642.   My curiosity of whether Galileo used the term luna leads me to a Galileo manuscript showing his observations of the Moon, Jupiter, Venus and the Sun.  Is anyone able to translate to find the reference to the Moon?   Yesterday our image was Butchart Gardens, and today our images are Marion Jarvie's garden in Toronto. We visited it yesterday. There seems a great similarity in design style between the two with the beautiful complex compositions.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://www.blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca