With summer in full reign, fields and pastures throughout the country are cheery with brilliant flashes of white or yellow butterflies, the Pieridae.
Flitting from blossom to blossom or pursuing each other playfully, they are most active and abundant on sunny days, although they often brave cloudy weather, startling sunless fields as fireflies at night.
Cabbage Butterfly
Undoubtedly the most common of these, the cabbage butterfly, is recognized both as a pest and a welcome harbinger of warm spring weather.
Abundant front coast to coast, it is, perhaps, the only butterfly that seriously injures a crop: cabbage.
Introduced from Europe to Quebec in 1800, its larvae also feed on cauliflower, mustard, and other crucifers.
The female is slightly larger than the male and is characterized by two black spots on the upper wings and one on the lower. The male has one spot on each upper wing.
Most Popular “Yellow”
Although other butterflies, such as the mourning cloak, emerge on earlier, sunny spring days, it remains the cabbage butterfly in our gardens and nearby fields to assure us that green grass and flowers are here to stay.
This white acquaintance usually appears on the first day we discard our coats.
The common sulfur, the most popular of the “yellows,” is beloved for its pure, golden yellow color.
The food of its larvae is abundant in clover fields, from coast to coast and from southern Canada to the southern United States.
It frequents wet places along the roadsides and may be often aroused in front of its wet “hangout” as we hurriedly pass it by.
Male And Female Species
As in most butterflies, the female of this species is larger than the male and has broader black margins dotted with spots at the outer edges of the wings.
The margins of the males are solid black. In addition, some whitish forms of common sulfur occur.
The orange sulfur, a brighter, more vivid orange-yellow relative of similar size and shape, is outstanding for its lustrous orange tones.
There are many color variations, and the males, with deeper hues, are almost tropical in the intensity of their coloring.
The female has bright orange spots on broad black wing margins, and both male and female have a black spot on the forewings and an orange one on the lower.
Extending over the same wide range as the common sulfur, the orange sulfur is somewhat more common in the West, where the larvae cause some damage to alfalfa crops in California.
Dogface Butterfly
Another yellow tribe member, the dogface butterfly, with a wing expanse of 2″ to 2 1/4″ inches, receives its name from the unusual black margins on the upper wings that outline the head and profile of a dog.
Both males and females have these markings; the color of the female is lighter.
A southern species, ranging to southern Illinois or Pennsylvania, is spreading as far north as Wisconsin and parts of southern Canada. The larvae feed on clover, false indigo, and other leguminous plants.
Easily recognizable because of its small size, the little sulfur extends as far west as the Rocky Mts. A dainty creature, it is brightly yellow-edged with black.
In the female, the small black border extending to the male’s lower wings may be broken or absent. Cassia and clover are the foods of the larvae.
44659 by G Talouis