“I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘The Farthest Shore‘
This is another story about the names of things. Because the names of things, especially the names of species, are fascinating. Better writers (and scientists) than me have written some fabulous texts on the subject*, and I don’t just want to regurgitate their information. This is rather more about the way that names can make you feel. The associations, albeit sometimes unconscious associations, that they have.
*I particularly enjoyed Stephen Heard’s ‘Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider’, although I did have a bit of an issue with the placement of the spider on the cover!
I have, on multiple occasions, found things that I was utterly convinced were caterpillars but that turned out to be sawfly larvae of various kinds. Even having done this, I still had very little idea what a sawfly actually looks like. If you’d put a gun to my head and insisted, I might have described something that looked a bit like a big mosquito.
So when I was walking through a stretch of mixed woodland and saw a large, dark … something … clinging to a tuft of grass, I initially thought it was a moth. Because of the transparent wings and black body, I had this wild idea in my head that it was maybe a Bee Hawkmoth. It was absolutely wishful thinking; I’ve seen them in the south of France but never in the UK, but that’s what my brain turned it into. On closer inspection, of course, the armour plated body and clearly delineated head meant that it obviously wasn’t a moth. I just didn’t know what it was.
A quick image search told me that it was a Birch Sawfly. It occurs to me, as I’m writing this, that it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that something which produces caterpillar-like larvae also looks slightly moth-like itself.
This is where the name bit comes in. The Birch Sawfly is also known as a Birch Clubhorn. Which definitely sounds like one of the dragons from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. You know: Hungarian Horntail**, Swedish Short-Snout, Chinese Fireball, and Birch Clubhorn. I mean, having been on a trip to Harry Potter World for activities week a couple of days ago, it’s possible that I may have Harry Potter on the brain, but there’s just something about the name that screams dragon. And its Latin name, Cimbex femoratus, does nothing to dispel this idea.
**While looking up sawfly anatomy, I’ve just discovered that there is a species in the family called a Giant Horntail and this makes me very happy (and proves my point about dragons).
Not that the Clubhorn is reptilian; instead, it’s inescapably insectile with large compound eyes and a patch of (distinctly spidery and therefore slightly creepy) ocelli between them. Its head gives the impression that it could twist and turn through 360°, its jaws are impressively scimitar-like, and its multi-jointed legs are tipped with what look like razor-sharp blades. The matte black exoskeleton could be forged from iron, beaten by eldritch blacksmiths to a precisely honed shape. Even its wings have a metallic sheen, and the look of ancient leaded window panes, stained and tinted sepia at their outermost edges.
Those clubbed ‘horns’ are the only part of it that doesn’t belong in some sinister Germanic folktale. Rather more Disneyesque than Grimm, they’re a cheerful, bright, and sunny yellow, which darkens to translucent amber along their length.
I left it conquering its grassy world and moved on, pondering names, dragons and fairytales.
absolutelynotnormal 