Painted Lady
| Painted Lady | ||||||||||||
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Painted Lady ( Vanessa cardui ) |
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| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
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The painted lady ( Vanessa cardui , Syn .: Cynthia cardui ) is a butterfly from the family of noble butterflies (Nymphalidae). The specific epithet is derived from Carduus ( ring thistles ), a genus of plants whose leaves serve as food for the caterpillars .
features
The moths reach a wingspan of 45 to 60 millimeters. The tips of the forewings resemble those of the admiral , they are also colored black and have several large and small white spots. The root field or the inner wing half has an orange and black spotted pattern. The base of the wings is colored yellow-brown. The hind wings are also yellow-brown at the base and have an extensive pattern similar to the drawing of the forewings, the black spots of which are only strongly colored on the outer edge of the wing, the other spots are pale. The underside of the hind wings is white and marbled in different shades of brown and has five different sized eye spots on the outer edge . The underside of the forewings is colored like the upper side, but distinctly paler. Two larger light spots are visible on the front edge. The black of the wing tips is partly mixed with brown tones and towards the wing base the orange can be colored towards red.
Vanessa Cardui
△ Vanessa cardui
The caterpillars are approx. 40 millimeters long and have a ring of thorns with branching thorns on each segment. Their light yellow to green-brown basic body color is dominated by a fine, variable dark pattern. The back and / or the segment rings between the thorns are usually more yellow in color, the base of the thorns is usually reddish. But there are also very light-colored caterpillars that are very white in color.
Similar species
- American painted lady ( Vanessa virginiensis )
- Admiral ( Vanessa atalanta )
- Canarian Admiral ( Vanessa vulcania )
Synonyms
- Cynthia cardui
- Papilio cardui
- Pyrameis cardui
Occurrence
Painted ladies are migratory butterflies and occur all over Europe , North Africa , Asia , North America and Australia up to an altitude of about 3,000 meters. Their home area is in the subtropical steppe areas . In Europe they are only permanently down to earth in the hot Mediterranean regions ; in the rest of southern Europe , the species needs several consecutive years with good conditions to be down to earth at times. They live in dry terrain, such as B. on dry grass , but you can find them in large numbers almost everywhere where thistles grow.
When migrating, the moths can cover long distances by being carried by the wind. This enables them to even reach the far north of Europe. In the newly populated areas they multiply several times; however, the offspring migrate back to areas that are favorable to them, as they cannot survive low temperatures in winter. Numerous animals fail to make their way across the Alps in time and die. You can then sometimes find a large number of dead painted ladies on glaciers.
Way of life
The moths can often be found sucking on thistle flowers, on the flower heads of red clover and on butterfly lilacs ( Buddleja davidii ). They often sit on the ground in a place free of vegetation to warm up.
Flight and caterpillar times
In their areas of origin, they occur all year round without diapause and form one generation after the other. In Europe, the moths fly in from May to July. Depending on the climate, they then train up to two generations that fly from July to August and from September to October. The caterpillars of the first newly trained generation can be found from June to July, the second from August to September.
Food of the caterpillars
The caterpillars feed on a variety of different plant families, depending on the area they are populated. In Europe, they are found on species of the cucurbit family (Cucurbitaceae), daisy family (Asteraceae), legumes (Fabaceae), grapevine family (Vitaceae), mallow family (Malvaceae), cruciferous family (Brassicaceae) and predatory leaf family (Boricaginaceae). But they prefer common thistle ( Cirsium vulgare ), cabbage thistle ( Cirsium oleraceum ) and other thistles and ring thistles ( Carduus spec. ) As well as donkey thistle ( Onopordum acanthium ). According to Jürgen Hensle from the Lepiforum , milk thistle ( Silybum marianum ) in large-scale cultivation areas south of Vienna has been completely devoured several times during the occasional mass influx of up to several hundred million painted ladybirds into Central Europe . The caterpillars are occasionally found on the great nettle ( Urtica dioica ) and the musk mallow ( Malva moschata ).
development
The females lay their cone-shaped, grayish and longitudinally grooved eggs individually on the upper side of the leaf of the forage plants. The animals sit down horizontally on the top of the plants and lay the egg on a leaf below, to which they extend their abdomen. The caterpillars that hatch from it spin the tip of the leaf, later the whole leaf, so that they can eat protected. In thistles, they spin a web between the base of the leaves and the stem.
swell
Individual evidence
- ^ Arnold Spuler: The butterflies of Europe . tape 1 . E. Schweitzerbartsche Verlagbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1908, p. 20 .
- ↑ a b c d e Tom Tolman, Richard Lewington: Die Tagfalter Europäische und Nordwestafrikas , p. 149, Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-440-07573-7
- ↑ a b Heiko Bellmann : The new Kosmos butterfly guide. Butterflies, caterpillars and forage plants. Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-440-09330-1 , p. 168.
- ↑ W. Düring: Painted Lady. In: Species portraits of butterflies in Rhineland-Palatinate. BUND RLP, April 14, 2020, accessed on April 14, 2020 (German).
- ↑ Manfred Koch : We identify butterflies. Volume 1: Butterfly. 4th enlarged edition. Neumann, Radebeul / Berlin 1966, DNB 457244224 , p. 90f.
- ↑ Hans-Josef Weidemann: Tagfalter: watch, determine , p. 412f, Naturbuch-Verlag Augsburg 1995, ISBN 3-89440-115-X
literature
- Günter Ebert (Hrsg.): The butterflies of Baden-Württemberg Volume 1, Butterfly I (Knight butterflies (Papilionidae), Weißlinge (Pieridae), Edelfalter (Nymphalidae)), Ulmer Verlag Stuttgart 1993. ISBN 3-8001-3451-9 .
- Axel Hausmann, Michael A. Miller: Atlas of the caterpillars of European and Asia Minor butterflies, photographed by Burkhard Nippe , Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, Munich, 2000, ISBN 3-931516-79-2 .
