www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Hello all, I bought an old framed butterfly taxidermy,wondering if anything rare or interesting,
Thanks!

Like the label says there's nothing that's currently classified as endangered from the looks of things. Having said that I wouldn't trust a company that mistakes the top left for a Swallowtail, it's Marpesia marcella, a member of the Nymphalidae family. If they can make that simple error then what's stopping them being fooled by a rare species being mistaken for a common species. Regardless, they would all look much better alive! Set specimens can never replicate the vibrancy of a living butterfly.

Agreed. They may be exotic tropical specimens but they're very dead! Curiously, while I'm no expert, I can say, the lower left one bears a striking resemblance to the Cleopatra, Gonepteryx cleopatra, whilst the lower centre one vaguely suggests the Scarce Swallowtail Iphiclides podalirius. Both of these beautiful species, while absent from Britain, are very common in southern and central Europe, you don't have to travel very far to see live specimens! Much more pleasurable than their mounted lookalikes!

661-Pete wrote:...you don't have to travel very far to see live specimens! Much more pleasurable than their mounted lookalikes!

Agreed. Such a joy to see them alive rather than in a glass mausoleum!

Your intuition is correct, 661-Pete. The one that looks like a scarce swallowtail is Graphium agesilaus, from the same broad group but a quite different part of the world. The one resembling a Cleopatra is Phoebis rurina, a little more distantly related but in the same subfamily as Cleopatra.

The Papilio designation for Marpesia marcella is so bizarre it must surely have been a simple mistake - labels falling off and being put back on by someone who had no idea about butterflies, for example.

The other species are Papilio lormieri (top centre), Doxocopa cherubina (top right) and Hypolimnas bolina (bottom right). At least, that's what the handwritten labels say. The Doxocopa looks more like cyane.

Guy

Thankyou everyone for your replies!I tried to read the writing on the back but was unable to decipher it!