Purple emperor
The purple emperor is a big dark brown butterfly with white bands on its wings. When the sun hits a boy butterfly, its wings suddenly shine bright purple blue. It lives high up in the tops of old oak trees.
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Fun facts
The purple shine is not paint. It comes from the way light bounces off tiny scales on the wings, and only the boys have it.
Boy butterflies sometimes fly down to drink from puddles and smelly dung on the ground.
Its caterpillar is green with two big horns on its head, a bit like a tiny slug with antlers.
In winter the caterpillar turns from green to brown so it matches the willow branch where it sleeps.
Its chrysalis is pale green and looks just like a new leaf bud.
Most asked questions about Purple emperor
?Why is the purple emperor called purple?
The wings of the boy butterfly shine purple blue in the sunlight. The girls are brown without the shine.
?What does a purple emperor eat?
It drinks honeydew from aphids, tree sap, and juices from dung and dead animals instead of flower nectar.
?How big is a purple emperor?
Its wings are about 7 to 9 centimetres across. The girls are a little bigger than the boys.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Apatura iris
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Apatura iris (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 Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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 hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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