With Summer in full reign, fields and pastures throughout the country are gay with brilliant flashes of white or yellow butterflies, the Pieridae. Flitting from blossom to blossom, or pursuing each other playfully, they are most active and abundant on sunny days, although they often brave cloudy weather startling sunless fields as fireflies at night.
Undoubtedly the most common of these, the cabbage butterfly, is recognized both as a pest and a welcome harbinger of warm Spring weather. Abundant front coast to coast, it is, perhaps, the only butterfly which seriously injures a crop: cabbage. Introduced from Europe to Quebec in 1800, its larvae also feeds on cauliflower, mustard and other crucifers. The female is slightly larger than the male and is characterized by two black spots on the upper wings and one on the lower. The male has one spot on each upper wing.
Although other butterflies, such as the mourning cloak, emerge on earlier, sunny Spring days, it remains for the cabbage butterfly, in our gardens and nearby fields, to assure us that green grass and flowers are here to stay. The first day on which we discard our coats is when this white acquaintance usually appears.
The common sulphur, the most popular of the “”yellows”", is beloved for its pure, golden yellow color. Abounding in clover fields, the food of its larvae, from coast to coast and southern Canada to the southern United States, it frequents wet places along the roadsides and may be often aroused front its wet “”hangout”" as we hurriedly pass it by.
The female of this species, as in most butterflies, is larger than the male and has broader black margins, dotted with spots, at the outer edges of the wings. The margins of the males are solid black. Some whitish forms of the common sulphur occur.
The orange sulphur, a brighter, more vivid orange-yellow relative, of similar size and shape, is outstanding for its lustrous orange tones. There are many color variations, and the males, with deeper hues, are almost tropical in the intensity of their coloring. The female has bright orange spots on broad black wing margins, and both male and female have a black spot on the fore wings and an orange one on the lower.
Extending over the same wide range as the common sulphur, the orange sulphur is somewhat more common in the \Vest where the larvae causes some damage to alfalfa crops in California.
Another yellow tribe member, the dog-face butterfly, with a wing expanse of 2-2 1/4″”, receives its name from the unusual black margins on the upper wings that outline the head and profile of a dog. Both male and female have these markings; the color of the female is lighter. A southern species, ranging to southern Illinois or Pennsylvania, it is spreading as far north as Wisconsin and parts of southern Canada. The larvae feeds on clover, false indigo and other leguminous plants.
Easily recognizable because of its small size, the little sulphur extends as far west as the Rocky Mts. A dainty creature, it is bright yellow edged with black. In the female, the small black border which extends to the lower wings in the male may be broken or absent. Cassia and clover are the foods of the larvae.
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