Green Underside

Back in Sussex today I walked my heathland butterfly transect and, to my surprise, recorded a Green Hairstreak. Its a new species for this transect, bringing the total to 24 - that's over half of the resident and common migrant species recorded in the county. Not a bad total for a  site that you can walk around in less than 30 minutes. 

Back in the early 18th century Petiver gave it the curious and long-winded name of 'Holly Under Green butterfly'. Subsequently he changed it to the 'Holly Butterfly'. Over the 18th century it went through various iterations - the Green Butterfly, the Bramble Fly, the Green Papillion -and finally became the Green Hairstreak in 1795. In his entomologist's guide of 1819 George Samouelle called it the 'Green Underside' which I think is rather appropriate (only the underside is green after all and the 'hairstreak' is frequently absent) but his suggestion never caught on, perhaps because he was something of a nightmare employee in his job as a curator of natural history at the British Museum.