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Specimen No. 84 Ember Monarch Butterfly
Specimen No. 84
Name: The Ember Monarch | Danaus aurantiacus flammeus
Collected by: Dr. Maren Llewellyn
Date of Discovery: 1883
Locality: Arroyo de las Rosas, Sonoran Plateau, Northern Mexico
Catalog No. FD - 22 - 042
Framed within museum-grade acrylic and preserved with reverence, Specimen No. 84—the Ember Monarch—is among the rarest recorded colorations of Danaus aurantiacus flammeus, a now near-legendary variation of the common monarch butterfly.
Its wings blaze with a saturated orange verging on vermilion, as if scorched gently by desert fire. When backlit, the veins in its wings shimmer like the filaments of dried marigolds—remnants of Día de los Muertos altars scattered across the Sonoran earth.
This singular butterfly was first documented by Dr. Maren Llewellyn, a British naturalist and early champion of field entonology who traversed Northern Mexico in the late 19th century. According to her hand-inked field notes (now housed in the archives of the Cawdor Insectarium), she discovered this specimen fluttering erratically above a grove of blooming Asclepias tuberosa—its preferred milkweed—during an unusually warm October. The surrounding arroyo had just endured a lightning-ignited grassland fire, and Llewellyn noted, almost poetically, that the butterfly’s intense coloration seemed to echo the aftermath: “like a cinder given wings.”
Unlike its more widely distributed cousin, Danaus plexippus, the Ember Monarch does not migrate long distances. Instead, it remains rooted to arid altitudes, adapting its shorter life cycle to the unpredictable flowering of drought-resistant flora. The intensified pigmentation is believed to serve as both a mating advantage and a defense mechanism—deterring predators by mimicking the flash pattern of desert flame beetles.
Note: High quality archival glicée print on acid-free paper, a method that creates fine art reproductions with exceptional color accuracy and longevity. Pigments-based inks are designed to resist fading and discoloration and capture the finest details and subtle color variations with great precision.
Housed in a 4×6” crystal-clear acrylic specimen block, its 1” depth allows freestanding display. Each piece is designed to exhibit on desk or shelf.
Fly Design uses a practice known as entonology — the study of fictitious insects — to reimagine the natural world through scientific storytelling and poetic design.
Specimen No. 84
Name: The Ember Monarch | Danaus aurantiacus flammeus
Collected by: Dr. Maren Llewellyn
Date of Discovery: 1883
Locality: Arroyo de las Rosas, Sonoran Plateau, Northern Mexico
Catalog No. FD - 22 - 042
Framed within museum-grade acrylic and preserved with reverence, Specimen No. 84—the Ember Monarch—is among the rarest recorded colorations of Danaus aurantiacus flammeus, a now near-legendary variation of the common monarch butterfly.
Its wings blaze with a saturated orange verging on vermilion, as if scorched gently by desert fire. When backlit, the veins in its wings shimmer like the filaments of dried marigolds—remnants of Día de los Muertos altars scattered across the Sonoran earth.
This singular butterfly was first documented by Dr. Maren Llewellyn, a British naturalist and early champion of field entonology who traversed Northern Mexico in the late 19th century. According to her hand-inked field notes (now housed in the archives of the Cawdor Insectarium), she discovered this specimen fluttering erratically above a grove of blooming Asclepias tuberosa—its preferred milkweed—during an unusually warm October. The surrounding arroyo had just endured a lightning-ignited grassland fire, and Llewellyn noted, almost poetically, that the butterfly’s intense coloration seemed to echo the aftermath: “like a cinder given wings.”
Unlike its more widely distributed cousin, Danaus plexippus, the Ember Monarch does not migrate long distances. Instead, it remains rooted to arid altitudes, adapting its shorter life cycle to the unpredictable flowering of drought-resistant flora. The intensified pigmentation is believed to serve as both a mating advantage and a defense mechanism—deterring predators by mimicking the flash pattern of desert flame beetles.
Note: High quality archival glicée print on acid-free paper, a method that creates fine art reproductions with exceptional color accuracy and longevity. Pigments-based inks are designed to resist fading and discoloration and capture the finest details and subtle color variations with great precision.
Housed in a 4×6” crystal-clear acrylic specimen block, its 1” depth allows freestanding display. Each piece is designed to exhibit on desk or shelf.
Fly Design uses a practice known as entonology — the study of fictitious insects — to reimagine the natural world through scientific storytelling and poetic design.