In a instant, the sight of this butterfly concentrates for me the pleasing balance between man and nature which most of us enjoy in our life in France. For me the history of man in the landscape and the complex story of natural life is encapsulated by the sight of the tawny-golden wings of this spectacular insect gliding along the wayside banks. Consciously or not, many of us appreciate the beauty of the countryside but may not grasp why it is so. The silver washed fritillary butterfly could not exist without a landscape of fields and woods. The edges of the fields by the woods are garlanded with the flowers of brambles, thistles and, as in this photo, the hemp agrimony. The woods have oak trees with crevassed bark. Below the oaks on the woodland floor grow the woodland violets which flower in spring. If the wood has had some trees felled, the violet plants will be even more plentiful. All this benefits the butterfly which could not otherwise exist.

The eggs are laid in August in a crevasse of the bark of a tree. These eggs may be placed as much as two metres above the ground. In a week or two the caterpillars hatch. It seems difficult to believe but after eating its own eggshell, it spins a little web and hides beneath this web for the next seven months - till the next March. Then the tiny larva, less than three millimetres long, crawls down the bark and locates a plant of violet. Then for three months it consumes the leaves, finally achieving a size of nearly four centimetres. Then it pupates and waits for about two more weeks to convert into the butterfly. The butterfly must itself eat sugary nectar which it gets from the brambles and other flowers in the full sun of the field edges. Astonishing this is, but all the necessary factors need to exist near at hand for the survival of the species, and it is largely the unconscious hand of man in the past that has created this complexity. Because of that, I enjoy in August the sight of several of these in flight in the same glance at the edge of the mown hay field.

It is a glorious insect. The wings spread to over 7 centimetres. The underside of the hind wings are suffused with a silvery-green wash of colour (so- its name). The males have four dark stripes on the top wing, as in this photo. In these are scent glands attractive to the females.

The name 'fritillary' refers to all similar butterflies that vaguely have a chequer-board patterning, the original Latin word being 'fritillus'. The commonplace French name, meaning 'spanish tobacco' is a peculiar oddity.

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