Painted Lady

Painted Lady

Photograph of a Painted Lady butterfly feeding on a gorse bush. The wings on this butterfly are coloured deep orange with black tips speckled with white.

Painted Lady

Painted Lady

Photograph of a Painted Lady butterfly feeding on a gorse bush. The wings on this butterfly are coloured deep orange with black tips speckled with white.

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Latin: Cynthia cardui

Irish:Áilleán

The Painted Lady is a relatively common migrant to the area from the continent and North Africa, though not normally as regular as the Red Admiral. It arrives in May and June in most years and has the ability to reproduce quite quickly in warm weather with the egg, caterpillar and chrysalis stages being completed in as little as a month. This enables the species to have a number of generations in one summer.

Eggs are normally laid on thistle species. None survive the winter, though there is a record of a 'very worn individual' seen on the North Slob on 18th February 1988. There is a tendency towards a southward migration in the autumn.