Cecropia Moth Print
Cecropia Moth Print
Size
12 × 18 in overall, unframed. The plate sits on an ivory sheet with a border of about an inch, so it fits a standard ready-made frame of the same size, with or without a mat.
Printed on 189 g/m² (10.3 mil) enhanced matte paper.
Want it ready to hang? The same plate comes framed in Black or Red Oak.
Moth, caterpillar and cocoons on a wild plum.
The print
- The full plate with its name, legend and credits, re-rendered from the source scan at print size, not enlarged from a shirt file.
- Restored from a library scan of the original book; nothing redrawn.
- Keep out of direct sunlight; a frame with glass or acrylic keeps it clean.
Shipping & production
Each print is printed for you after you order, usually within 2–5 business days, and ships on its own (separate from any shirts or framed prints in the same order). Shipping is shown at checkout before you pay.
Returns
If your print arrives damaged or misprinted, contact us within 30 days of delivery with a photo and we'll send a replacement or a refund. Because every print is made to order, we can't accept returns for a change of mind.
Plate 018
From the book
- Species
- Hyalophora cecropia
- As named in the book
- Phalaena Cecropia. Great Brown Emperor Moth.
- Artist
- John Abbot
- Book
- The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia, tab. XLV, 1797
Then and now
North America's largest native moth.
Field notes
North America's largest moth lives a week, and never eats.
John Abbot painted the whole life on one branch, on what his editor called a wild American plum: the great brown moth with its red-banded wings and crescent spots, the green caterpillar studded with colored knobs, and the tough silk cocoons it spins for winter.
With wings five to six inches across, the cecropia is the largest native moth in North America. The adult has no working mouth. It lives only days on what it stored as a caterpillar, long enough to find a mate and lay eggs.
Everything happens once a year. The caterpillars spend the summer eating the leaves of ash, birch, maple, cherry, plum, willow, apple and lilac, spin up in fall, and the moths come out the next spring.