New Year Coppers

Coastal coppers - our butterflies at the beach

January 2025

North Island coastal copper

One of the plants I've already added to the garden is Muehlenbeckia complexa or pohuehue. It joins the groundcover Muehlenbeckia axillaris as an act of hope in the same vein as the film 'Field of Dreams'. Plant it and they will come. "They" are copper butterflies.

Places like the sand dunes at Muriwai are great for seeing copper butterflies, as is the open sanctuary on Tiritiri Matangi, although coppers are suffering from predation by introduced wasps, like all the other butterflies.

The coppers up the north of the country like open spaces by the coast, some in sight of the beach, where muehlenbeckia grows for their caterpillars. They don't venture far from where they emerge - an estimated 50m - so I have to hope there are enough stepping stones of host plants for them to make it to my place. I'm about 0.5km from the coast, uphill and through bush, so I need nine neighbours to also have planted muehlenbeckia in order for them to work their way inland! I hope they do make it - they are such elegant little butterflies.

I was driving down to Mount Maunganui the day after New Year and I stopped at Waihi Beach, as I'd never been there before and was curious. That is some stretch of beach - 10kms - but being New Year, it was crazy busy. I drove east along the coast and found a much quieter section to eat my lunch. By the entrance to the beach were lots of coastal coppers.

Waihi Beach

I watched the coppers move around the plants that were helping stabilise the sand - hebes, muehlenbeckia, hedge bedstraw and others. It was such a joy to see their interactions and it lifted my heart, which was so welcome, as my journey was not a happy one.

There is still so many unknowns about copper butterflies and DNA work is underway to determine the New Zealand species, that have been shuffling around in their taxonomy names like a deck of cards until now. Some species are variable in appearance and they have been hard to compartmentalise. I love the nickname of the Canterbury copper, which is currently undescribed (that is, it hasn't been studied and had an article published in a scientific journal, defining what makes it a distinct species). It's been dubbed the winter copper. I don't know if this is after a person or the season, but it is rather evocative and makes me think of a blaze of orange fire in the darkest of seasons. Whatever these butterflies are called, they are very special and one of New Zealand's beautiful mysteries.