Maybe, Ilse, for the benefit of those who don't want to fool with Google, I should lead everyone through it.
Bob Nold included the phrase Farfallonia amorosa in his poem. I took that to be a reference to Figaro's aria "Non pui andrai farfarole amoroso" from Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro. In the aria, Figaro is telling Cherubino (a trouser role: a male role played by a female singer) that his easy life as an amorous butterfly is over because he's being sent into the army. In Italian, farfarole amoroso is amorous butterfly. Bob's Farfallonia amorosa also looked like a botanical name to me. After toying with that a bit, I decided to treat it as the name of a fictitious plant in the family asclepiadaceae. We have a butterfly here in the states, the monarch butterfly Danaus plexippus, whose larvae feed almost exclusively on plants of the family asclepiadaceae. Many of us grow milkweeds (Asclepias sp.) specifically to feed the caterpillars. The caterpillars can defoliate the plants. For the "farfallonian amorosa" at the end of my piece, perhaps I should have written farfallonian amorosity. Incidentally, those of you who know your pasta are probably familiar with the pasta shape called farfalle, in English bowties. . That is from the Italian word for bow tie, cravatte a farfalla. Farfalla and farfallone both mean butterfly; I suspect farfallone refers to a big butterfly. Do we have an Italian speaker who can comment on that? And yes, Ilse, where would we be without Google! Jim McKenney
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