Great spangled fritillary
The great spangled fritillary is a big orange butterfly with black dashes and crescents on its wings. When it closes its wings you can see shiny silver spots underneath, like sequins. That is where the word spangled comes from.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillars only grow up on violets, like the common blue violet.
Females are usually darker than males.
Butterflies from the western part of its home are a brighter orange than those in the east.
Under the back wings there is a wide yellow band with silver triangles next to the brown edge.
Most asked questions about Great spangled fritillary
?What does the great spangled fritillary caterpillar eat?
It eats the leaves of wild violets.
?How big is the great spangled fritillary?
Its wings measure about 6 to 9 centimetres from tip to tip.
?Where does the great spangled fritillary live?
In North America, in damp meadows and at the edges of woods.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Speyeria cybele
- Named by
- Fabricius, 1775
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Great spangled fritillary (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by MONGO. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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