The Poweshiek Skipper Project

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Information about the butterfly

O. poweshiek, Legacy butterfly
Original description p. 1
Original description p. 2
Legacy of the prairie

Legacy of Chief Poweshiek
Legacy of H. W. Parker
Legacy of the natural world

H.W. Parker's writings

The Iceberg

The New Planet

The Removal

Von Blixum's Heroic Experiment

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The Poweshiek Skipper Project

Goals of the project
History of the Project
Proposed group
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On June 21, 1870 H. W. Parker caught 32 individuals of a small butterfly in Grinnell, Iowa.  He recognized it as a new species, and within a week had written up a scientific description of the butterfly, naming it after the county  in which it was found.  His new butterfly was called Hesperia powesheik.  You might notice that the name of the county was misspelled.  

The butterfly has been called by more than one scientific name and by several common names.  The scientific name is now Oarisma poweshiek (Parker, 1870) and its common name is the Poweshiek skipper (or more officially, the Poweshiek skipperling)

The Poweshiek skipper is now a very rare butterfly, apparently needing high quality prairies to survive.  It was last seen in its namesake county in 1917, and now is only found in a few places in northwest Iowa and a very few Midwestern states and Canada.

The butterfly belongs here in Iowa.  It belongs in Poweshiek County.

Unfortunately, like much of Iowa's biological diversity, this butterfly has largely been ignored and undervalued.  Like too much of Iowa's biological diversity it has been removed from most of the landscape. 

The Poweshiek skipper is Iowa's legacy butterfly.

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