From Sweden to Texas to Buffalo to Manitoba - The Story of the White Flower Moth

Gustaf Wilhelm Belfrage was born in April 1834 in Stockholm, Sweden, into an aristocratic family. He was the youngest of two sons, and his older brother followed in their father's footsteps to become an officer in the Swedish military. While the reason(s) behind it appear lost to history, young Gustaf went in an entirely different direction and made his way to the United States. He landed in New York and eventually ended up in Bosque County, Texas.

He made his living selling insect specimens to collectors and scientists all over North America and Europe. These days, scientists typically travel to their areas of study and collect their own specimens. But as you can imagine, travel in the 1800's was much slower than it is today so scientists often bought specimens from collectors in various parts of the world. Over the course of his time in Texas, Gustaf collected and sold tens of thousands of specimens (though oddly he never published any articles of his own). His specialty was moths.

A number of the specimens he collected ended up in the hands of Leon F. Harvey of Buffalo, New York. This gentleman paid the bills as a physician and dentist, but his hobby was identifying and describing moths. Alongside his scholarly articles on dentistry, Dr. Harvey published numerous journal articles describing and naming many moth species, many of which were based on the specimens sent to him by Gustaf Belfrage.

One specimen he got from Mr. Belfrage was quite different from any others he had seen before, so different in fact that not only did he describe it as a new species but also created a new genus for it. The new genus he named Pippona, and the new species was named Pippona bimatris. Bimatris means 'of or having two mothers' which is a curious name for a moth, but unfortunately Dr. Harvey neglected to mention why he chose this name. The specimen had pure white wings, an orange body, and green eyes.

In 1903, George Hampson, a moth scientist in Britain, decided that this species was not so different that it needed it's own genus, so included it in the genus Lygranthoecia. Thus the species name became Lygranthoecia bimatris. This name lasted until 1954 when William Forbes, an American entomologist, decided that it should actually be included in the genus Schinia, so the name became Schinia bimatris, which remains its scientific name to date.

Over the years, this species was occasionally recorded in several south-central states. Interestingly, it was also collected in Manitoba in the Carberry sandhills, some 1000 km north of the nearest occurrence! This remains the only known occurrence of this species in Canada, despite surveys (including some by the Manitoba Conservation Data Centre) in other sandhill complexes in Manitoba. Thus the White Flower Moth is listed as Endangered under both federal and provincial legislation. Fortunately, all of its known habitat is protected in Spruce Woods Provincial Park and CFB Shilo. Next time you go for a hike in the open sand dunes of this area, keep an eye out for this rare species and if you see it please add it to iNaturalist - there's only one observation recorded so far!

Gustaf Belfrage died in his cabin in Norse, Texas, in December 1882, in the company of thousands of specimens he had collected but not yet sent to anyone. Dr. Leon Harvey was an active member of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences in the mid-1870's and published a number of entomological articles during that time. He died in New Rochelle, New York, in 1912.

Posted on 22 de maio de 2020, 02:07 PM by manitoba_cdc manitoba_cdc

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The one and only White Flower Moth record on iNaturalist: https://inaturalist.ca/observations/32852173

Publicado por manitoba_cdc quase 4 anos antes

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