Kobaltana in Pale Fire

In his Index to Shade’s poem Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions Kobaltana (in Kinbote’s Index the entry Kobaltana immediately follows the entry Kinbote, Charles, Dr):

Kobaltana, a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks, now a cold and desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered in military families and forest castles, not in the text.

Kobal’t being the Russian name of cobalt (a chemical element), Kinbote’s Kobaltana seems to hint at the butterfly Itylos cobaltana.

From Wikipedia:

Itylos is a butterfly genus in the family Lycaenidae. There has been confusion regarding the correct name; the present genus was discussed in 1945 by the famous lepidopterist and author Vladimir Nabokov as Parachilades but had been described already in 1921. Nabokov used the name Itylos for the genus which nowadays is known as Madeleinea.

Madeleinea is a butterfly genus in the family Lycaenidae. These Andean butterflies are very interesting from a taxonomic standdpoint. This genus was discussed by famous author and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov in 1945. However, he used the name Itylos, which actually refers to a closely but distinct genus described in 1921. That was not known in his time however, as the relationships of the butterflies discussed by Nabokov were only resolved in 1993. In any case, Nivalis was proposed as a replacement name by Emilio Balletto but for technical reasons turned out to be unavailable. Zsolt Bálint subsequently established the currently-valid name. The latter researcher, in cooperation with Kurt Johnson, since then described many taxa new to science. To honor the contributions of Nabokov to entomology - chiefly concerning Lycaenidae - these were often given names referring to the novels of Nabokov, or characters therein.

Let me also draw your attention to the updated version of my previous post, “David van Veen & Vatican in Ada; Emblem Bay & Iris Acht in Pale Fire.”