Saturday, August 11, 2012

Painted Ladies

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)


There were two painted ladies flitting about this Viper's bugloss. To the right is a picture of the other one where you can see the underside of the hind wing and the 5 eye-spots that identify this butterfly as a Painted Lady and not the very similar American Lady which has only 2 eye spots. These butterflies have multiple generations a year. They cannot survive the winter and must have traveled here over the course of the summer from areas to the south that do not have severe frosts.

No comments:

Post a Comment