Painted Lady

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For other uses, see Painted Lady (disambiguation).

Painted Lady

Specimen from England

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Nymphalidae
Subfamily:	Nymphalinae
Tribe:	Nymphalini
Genus:	Vanessa
Subgenus:	Cynthia
Species:	V. (C.) cardui

Binomial name

Vanessa (Cynthia) cardui
(Linnaeus, 1758)

Synonyms

Papilio cardui Linnaeus, 1758

The Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) is a well-known colourful butterfly, sometimes known in North America as the Cosmopolitan.

It is one of the most widespread of all butterflies, found on every continent except Antarctica. In Australia, V. cardui has a limited range around Bunbury, Fremantle and Rottnest Island. However, its close relative, the Australian Painted Lady (Vanessa kershawi, sometimes considered a subspecies) ranges over half the continent. Other closely related species are the American Painted Lady (Vanessa virginiensis), and the West Coast Lady (Vanessa annabella).

1 Distinguishing features
- 1.1 Gallery
2 References

Two Vanessa cardui, 3 hours after emergence from chrysalis.

The Painted Lady occurs in any temperate zone, including mountains in the tropics. The species is resident only in warmer areas, but migrates in spring, and sometimes again in autumn. For example, it migrates from North Africa and the Mediterranean to Britain in May and June, but offspring produced there die in the Autumn.

Painted Lady butterflies are popular for many pre-school classes to raise in schools to demonstrate the life cycle of a butterfly. The eggs take 2 weeks to hatch. The caterpillar takes 7 - 11 days to turn into a chrysalis. It takes 7 - 11 days for the chrysalis to turn into a butterfly. It doesnt stay in one area so long. The painted lady butterfly moves 1,000 miles in its life. Its wing span is 2 in. long. If you have a painted lady that you want to keep. To feed it you have to stir 1 tablespoon of sugar into a glass of water and take spoon and get some of the sugar solution and pour it on a flower. Next pick the flower and put it in your painted ladys cage. It will suck the solution from the flower in its mouth and drink the fluid. That will give it nutrients. You may mistake a painted lady with a monark. The painted lady caterpillar is black with spiked skin. The caterpillars feed on a wide variety of host plants of the families Asteraceae, especially Carduus crispus (as implied by the species name cardui - Latin for "of the thistles"). Also, Boraginaceae, Malvaceae (especially hollyhocks and dwarf mallow Malva neglecta), and a number of Fabaceae are eaten. The adults drink nectar from a variety of wildflowers and cultivars, more commonly the favored thistle, butterfly bush (Buddleia), asters, Tickseed sunflowers (Bidens) and zinnias.

[edit] Distinguishing features

Painted Lady in Himachal, India

Life Cycle of Painted Lady, Iran

For a key to the terms used see Lepidopteran glossary

In general, the Painted Lady is a large butterfly (wing span 5-9 cm (2 - 2 7/8 in)) identified by the black and white corners of its mainly deep orange, black-spotted wings. It has 5 white spots in the black forewing tips and while the orange areas may be pale here and there, there are no cliean white dots in them. The hindwings carry 4 small submarginal eyespots on dorsal and ventral sides. Those on the dorsal side are black, but in the summer morph sometimes small blue pupils are present in some.

The American Painted Lady (V. virginiensis) is most easily distinguishable by its two large hindwing eyespots on the ventral side. virginiensis also features a white dot within the subapical field of the forewings set in pink on the ventral side, and often as a smaller clean white dot in the orange of the dorsal side too. A less reliable indicator is the row of eyespots on the dorsal submarginal hindwing; virginiensis often has two larger outer spots with blue pupils. The black forewing tips have 4-5 white spots, usually the largest is whitish orange.

The West Coast Lady (V. annabella) does not have obvious ventral eyespots. On the dorsal side, anabella lacks a white dot in the subapical orange found in virginiensis, and is a purer orange color. annabella has a fully orange subapical band and leading edge on the forewing. The submarginal row of hindwing spots in annabella features three or four blue pupils. The two larger pupils in annabella are the inner spots, rather than the outer spots as in corresponding virginiensis.

The Australian Painted Lady (V. kershawi) is quite similar to V. cardui. Its four ventral eyespots are less clearly defined, and it always sports at least three (often four) blue pupil spots on its dorsal hindwing. Caterpillars are found mainly on Ammobium alatum.

[edit] Gallery

Vanessa cardui, Europe. Spots in black forewing tip all white. No or little blue in hindwing eyespots.	Young caterpillar	Older caterpillar	Drying wings after eclosion
Adult at rest	Underside	Underside, feeding on Eupatorium	Painted Ladies from the Chesapeake Bay area, USA
Specimen from India	Specimen from Riga, Latvia	Himachal, India	Himachal, India
Himachal, India	In Himachal, India	Painted Lady on Lilac