In the world of live butterflies – and particularly amongst people devoted to live butterfly gardens – the Painted Lady butterfly tends not to get much respect. It’s not the most colorful of butterflies, nor the most elegant.
In fact, it’s often mistaken by novice lepidopterists as a Monarch butterfly!
But the Painted Lady is a common visitor to most gardens, and as one of the more populous butterflies in the world (it can literally be found on every continent on the planet save South America and Antarctica), really deserves more attention and credit than it gets.
Painted Ladies are fairly large as butterflies go. Their wing span can fall just shy of three inches. You can identify them by the black and white corners of the wings which are orange with black spots on them. The orange and the black – reminiscent of Monarchs – are what confuse some people.
The catch – or tell – that you can use to figure out if what you’re looking at is a Painted Lady are the white spots on its wings. You’ll see five of them on the fore wing tips and four – fairly hard to find – ones on the hind wings.
If you’re interested in attracting some of these butterflies to your garden, remember that they drink nectar the same as other butterflies do. Popular plants and flowers include: asters, the blazing star, cosmos, Joe Pye weed and even Thistle. In our garden, I have noticed that the Painted Lady is often attracted to the Hollyhock.
And, of course, they appreciate butterfly bushes.
Just because they’re so numerous – and they don’t have the same fascinating migration story as the Monarch butterfly does – they tend to get a bad rap. But they are hearty insects – popular in some of the butterfly kits and butterfly pavilions put out by Insect Lore – and so a lot of butterfly lovers get their start on them.
If you are new to live butterfly gardens in general, put the Painted Lady on your list. You’re sure to see him or her at your place come summer!
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