Least Skipper on African Blue Basil

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This is one of my personal favorite images in the 2025 collection. It is just a simple image of a Least Skipper butterfly getting nourishment from an African Blue Basil plant. The Least Skipper is one of the smallest butterflies to visit backyards and gardens in Maryland. It was its tiny size that caught my attention while it flitted from one flower to another on this basil plant. I had the zoom lens extended to maximum magnification and was able to create the soft greenish gray bokeh in the background. In photography, bokeh is the aesthetic quality of blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image, either in the foreground or background or both.

As for the African Blue Basil plant, it has become one of our favorite herbs. What a winner it is by being a two-in-one plant. For one, its leaves have a soft basil flavor when used for cooking and flavoring. Secondly, its appeal to me is purely visual. It has green foliage with purple shading and a profusion of light lavender flowers on its many stalks. It is absolutely stunning when left to go to seed. And the bees and butterflies flock to it like kids to a candy store. This growing season we have scattered eight of these plants around the backyard, as “ornamental” plantings. Hopefully the bees and butterflies will share and won’t mind if we take a leaf or two every once in a while.