A beautiful bug’s life -- and its colorful history

As is true of Sharman Apt Russell’s “Anatomy of a Rose,” her latest book, “An Obsession With Butterflies,” is a rumination on beauty, passionately observed.

“Adding butterflies to your life is like adding another dimension,” she writes, and during the course of this all-too-brief text reveals the splendor of this mythic insect -- describing its relationship to the natural world, its amazing life cycle, eating and mating habits, coloring pattern and migratory behavior. She brings vast knowledge and a childlike wonder to her subject. Readers will gain a newfound appreciation for butterflies, and may very well race out the door afterward, filled with the hope of a sighting.

Russell’s own introduction to lepidoptera left her feeling as though “I had been handed a gift I didn’t deserve.” She shares stories of her butterfly encounters, as well as those of famous and less-famous lepidopterists, and a history of the butterfly’s cultural symbolism. The content is seamlessly blended -- which makes you feel as though you’ve read, simultaneously, a person’s private, intimate journal and a well-researched primer on the natural world.

The author provides ample historical context for butterfly love, tracing its mystery and allure through the centuries.

In the Middle Ages, she writes, people believed butterflies “were disguised fairies bent on stealing dairy products such as butter, milk, and cream. Over time, fairies and butterflies became ever more linked, both tiny winged creatures, sportive, and merry.”

She writes of Lady Eleanor Glanville, whose collection of butterflies led her, in the early 1700s, to be declared insane: “None but those deprived of their Senses would go in Pursuit of butterflyes,” declared a local entomologist at the time. It wasn’t until the mid-18th century that butterfly collecting found its respectability, and lectures and field trips became widespread.

Russell’s passionate engagement with this insect is abundantly clear. Butterflies are nothing less than tiny miracles, transforming from “a bag of goo splotched with yellow” into something “fluted and glowing,” she writes. French naturalist Marcel Roland, she reminds, said butterflies provide us with “solace for the pain of living.”

Even as she celebrates butterflies, Russell concedes they aren’t of much practical use in the world: “Butterflies are not like beetles or bees, engines of pollination. They do not even compare favorably to moths, their kissing cousins. If all butterflies were to disappear, so would a few flowers -- but not many.” However, that “uselessness has a certain grace,” she adds, which has driven so many to nurture their love of butterflies. For instance, the late Charles Rothschild “once stopped a train when he saw a rare butterfly through the window.”

Among the book’s most fascinating passages are those detailing the precarious life cycle of the caterpillar, whose time as a butterfly is no less dangerous. As soon as the female butterfly lays her eggs, the danger is immediate: “Viral, bacterial, and fungal infections can attack the egg. Tiny parasitic wasps or flies burrow into its tissue and lay their own eggs; when these young hatch, they feed on the embryonic caterpillar.... The possibility for disaster is high; the chances for survival are not.”

It’s hard to think of anyone who has described the caterpillar in such poetic (and typographic) terms: “A young caterpillar can be the size of a comma or a hyphen or a dash.” She traces their strange little bodies with the attentiveness usually reserved for describing a lover.

Passages detailing the caterpillar’s battle for survival against potential attackers are packed with as much drama and suspense as any action movie at the local multiplex. (She compares one self-protective caterpillar tactic to a Tom Cruise stunt in “Mission: Impossible.”) “For a caterpillar, it never ends. There is always one more thing to worry about.”

They have strategies to make predators think they are not worth eating. They can reverse gallop, flex sideways and even coil into a wheel, rolling back at a speed of 15 inches per second. “This is a sprint,” writes Russell, “the ultimate chase scene.”

No book about lepidoptera would be complete without ample mention of one of the most famous (and obsessed) lepidopterists of all time, Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote “Lolita.” He observed and collected butterflies compulsively, and his research and classifications proved seminal in the field. Among other books, Russell mentions the recent “Nabokov’s Butterflies,” which contains his splendid and previously unpublished writings on butterflies.

“An Obsession With Butterflies” is reminiscent of Michael Pollan’s “The Botany of Desire,” combining the personal, historical and scientific in its study of the natural world. Both books contain an ardor and awe toward their subjects that is infectious. Although Russell’s book is hardly simple, its message about the natural world is plain: Pay attention.