Queen of Spain fritillary
The Queen of Spain fritillary is an orange butterfly with neat rows of round black spots. Underneath, its back wings are decorated with big shiny pearly spots, like a queen's jewels. It is a strong flyer that travels far.
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Fun facts
Its pupa is dark brown with white patches and looks like a bird dropping, so nobody wants to eat it.
It can have three or four families of butterflies in one year and is seen from March to October.
It migrates. In dry lands it flies up into the mountains for summer and comes back down in autumn.
Its caterpillar is greyish brown with white-tipped spines and grows to about 3.5 centimetres long.
It can live from the seaside all the way up to 2700 metres high in the mountains.
Most asked questions about Queen of Spain fritillary
?Where does the Queen of Spain fritillary live?
In open, dry grassy places and fields across Europe, North Africa and Asia.
?What does the Queen of Spain caterpillar eat?
Mostly violets and wild pansies, and also lucerne and borage.
?How big is the Queen of Spain fritillary?
Its wings measure about 3.8 to 4.6 centimetres from tip to tip.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Issoria lathonia
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Queen of Spain 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 Hectonichus. 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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