| Kamehameha butterfly | ||||||||||||||
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| Conservation status | ||||||||||||||
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Not evaluated (IUCN)
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| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
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| Binomial name | ||||||||||||||
| Vanessa tameamea (Eschscholtz, 1878) |
The Kamehameha butterfly (Vanessa tameamea) is one of the two species of butterfly native to Hawai‘i (the other is Udara blackburnii). The Hawaiian name is pulelehua. This is today a catch-all native term for all butterflies; its origin seems to be pulelo "to float" or "to undulate in the air" + lehua, a Metrosideros polymorpha flower: an animal that floats through the air, from one lehua to another. Alternatively, it is called lepelepe-o-Hina - roughly, "Hina's fringewing" - which is today also used for the introduced Monarch butterfly. The caterpillars feed on Pipturus albidus (māmaki). It is named after the royal House of Kamehameha; the last king of this lineage, Kamehameha V, had died in 1872, a short time before this species was described. The specific name tameamea is an old-fashioned and partially wrong transcription of "Kamehameha". The Hawaiian language has no strict distinction between the voiceless alveolar plosive and voiceless velar plosive; use varies from island to island and today, "k" is used as the standard transliteration. The voiceless glottal transition "h" is distinct and should always be pronounced - for example, "aloha" is correct whereas "aloa" is a wrong pronunciation.
