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The animal on the cover of Palm webOS is a luna moth (Actias luna). Luna moths usually live in North American regions filled with black cherry, maple, hickory, willow, and other trees with leaves that can feed their young.
Upon hatching, luna moth caterpillars will wander aimlessly along the plants they were born upon and befriend other recently born caterpillars. But after passing through subsequent stages of larval development, the caterpillars’ gregarious temperaments change, and they become loners as they prepare for pupation.
Before spinning and entering their thin cocoons, luna moth caterpillars will expel excess water and other fluids from their bodies. Once cocooned, the caterpillars will pupate for approximately two weeks, after which they will emerge in daylight with wet, crumpled wings. Although their wings take only 20 minutes to dry, luna moths will wait until nighttime to fly, as they have also metamorphosed into entirely nocturnal creatures.
While the caterpillars will munch on the leaves of the plants they were born upon, luna moths begin and end their adulthoods mouthless. But this trait does not disable them: they have no need for food, as they have also lost their digestive tracts. Though other insects will forage for food shortly after birth, luna moths exist only to find a mate and produce another generation.
Female luna moths attract mates by releasing pheromones from their abdomens; males detect these pheromones via their hairy antennae (and, because males and females both possess lime-green wings, a close inspection of a moth’s antennae is an easy way to determine gender, as the male’s antennae are hairier than the female’s). Luna moths typically mate after midnight, and females will lay 100 to 300 eggs on the undersides of leaves just hours later, in the evening. The insect’s short lifespan necessitates an accelerated reproduction schedule—adult luna moths live no longer than a week.
Luna moths have inspired many: Luna Moth is the name of a character in Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Picador), and Vladimir Nabokov, who was also an accomplished lepidopterist, has described the insect admiringly in his writings. Crafters have also paid homage to the insect’s vivid wings with products ranging from shawls to stained glass. Luna was also Palm, Inc.’s code name for the webOS application environment, including the Mojo framework.
The cover image is from Dover’s Animals. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont’s TheSansMonoCondensed.