Wildlife watch: Orange-tip butterfly
Kate Bradbury explains how to identify an orange-tip butterfly and which flowers they love to feed from
The orange-tip is one of the first butterflies of the year to emerge and can be found nectaring on spring flowers such as bluebells and cuckoo flower. The male is white with orange wing tips while the female has black wing tips – both sexes have beautiful mottled underwings, which are visible when mating and resting. After mating the female lays eggs on the flower stalks of cuckoo flower and hedge mustard, but in gardens may also lay on honesty and sweet rocket.
These eggs are greenish at first but mature to orange, and the first instar caterpillars are orange, too, becoming green after the first moult. The caterpillars nibble on developing seedpods and flowers, and are brilliantly camouflaged, often resting lengthways on the stems and seedpods. They pupate in summer, attaching to an upright stem, where they remain throughout winter, emerging as adults the following spring.
How to care for orange-tip butterflies
The best thing you can do for orange tips is to grow their caterpillar foodplants: cuckoo flower and hedge mustard, honesty and sweet rocket. Ensure also that there is plenty in flower for them to nectar on in spring, from April to June. It’s really important to respect their lifecycle: orange tips overwinter as a chrysalis on or near the stems of their foodplants, so you will need to leave these in place throughout winter.
This means not clearing away spent honesty, sweet rocket, cuckoo flower or hedge mustard foliage until the following spring, or at least clearing it away but hanging the stems somewhere the chrysalises won’t be disturbed. This will ensure they emerge as adults safely in spring, ready to repopulate your garden with tiny orange caterpillars.
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