This Monday, a week later than normal, His Imperial Majesty awoke in the woods of Sussex and Surrey. The purple emperor is midsummer incarnate – its flashing, iridescent purple wings the perfect accompaniment to both sunshine and, this year, violent lightning.
When Victorian collectors nicknamed our second-largest butterfly HIM, they were not being sexist but simply referring to the male. The female is even larger but does not flash purple and is a secretive presence, laying eggs in sallow thickets.
The purple emperor has bewitched butterfly lovers for centuries, inspiring great names – the Purple Shades, the Purple Highflier – and poetry. John Masefield wrote: “That dark prince, the oakwood haunting thing / Dyed with blue burnish like the mallard’s wing”.
Its elusiveness makes it tantalising but in recent years it’s thrived in places such as Fermyn Woods, Northamptonshire, where conifer plantations have been removed and sallow has naturally regenerated. Although enthusiasts scour prominent oak trees where males joust, its caterpillar’s food plant is key.
The naturalist and emperor expert Matthew Oates once sold his record collection to fund a summer in pursuit of emperors. He’s also hoisted a 15lb salmon into a tree as an emperor lure, as well as indescribably pongy fish pastes (the emperor enjoys feeding on rabbit corpses, dog poo and muddy puddles).
Oates spotted one of this year’s first on the Knepp Castle estate in Sussex, an arable farm rewilded by its owner, Charlie Burrell. According to Oates, the natural explosion of sallow at Knepp makes it the best emperor citadel in Britain.
I’m off there next week, preparing for a day of worship – and praying for sunshine.
