Painted Lady Butterfly Images

Painted Lady Butterfly Images, Facts and Information:

Vanessa cardui

• Painted Lady butterflies are medium-sized butterflies with orange-brown wings patterned with black and white markings. The undersides of the wings are mottled with brown, gray, and pinkish hues that provide camouflage when the wings are closed. Adults have a wingspan of 2 to 2.9 inches.
• Painted Lady butterflies are found on every continent except Antarctica and South America, making them the most widespread butterfly species in the world. In North America, they range from Canada through the United States and into Mexico. Painted Lady butterflies inhabit open areas such as meadows, fields, gardens, and roadside margins.
• Painted Lady butterflies feed primarily on nectar from thistles, asters, cosmos, and other flowering plants. Caterpillars feed on more than 100 species of host plants, commonly on thistles, mallows, and hollyhocks.
• Females lay single eggs on host plant leaves. The greenish-yellow eggs hatch in about three to five days. The larvae live in silk tents they spin on host plants and go through several molts before forming a spiny, brownish chrysalis. Adults emerge in about 7 to 10 days.
• Painted Lady butterflies are long-distance migrants. In North America, they migrate northward each spring from the desert Southwest and Mexico, and their offspring return south in the fall.
• A group of butterflies can be called a “kaleidoscope” of butterflies.

I hope you enjoy my Painted Lady butterfly photos.