A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1139 entries
damselfly
A damselfly is the slender cousin of the dragonfly, and the easiest way to tell them apart is at rest: A damselfly folds its wings back along its body, while a dragonfly holds them out flat. Damselflies are weaker fliers, their eyes are set apart on either side of the head rather than meeting on top, and the front and hind wings are the same shape. They hunt small insects in flight and spend most of their lives as underwater larvae.
Etymology
The English name translates the French demoiselle, a young lady, which was in use for the insect before English picked it up. Naturalists of the period sorted the group by size and manner, and the delicacy of the flight got the smaller ones a courtly name. The scientific term for the suborder, Zygoptera, means paired wings, and describes the matched front and hind pairs that separate them from dragonflies.
Notes
Mating damselflies form a shape known as the heart or wheel, with the male gripping the female behind the head and the female curling forward, and pairs stay linked in flight for a long time afterward. Some tropical species have wingspans over seven inches and hover in front of spiderwebs to pick the spiders off.