Common ringlet
The common ringlet is a small butterfly of North American meadows. Its wings can be pale white, yellow or orange, depending on where it lives. Some have little eyespots under their wings, and some have none at all.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Butterflies that hatch in spring are darker and greyer, which may help them warm up in the cool weather.
In warm places there are two families of them each year, but high in the mountains only one.
Scientists once thought it was the same species as a European butterfly, but its genes showed it is its own kind.
It has been split into almost 20 different named kinds, because it looks so different from place to place.
Most asked questions about Common ringlet
?What does the common ringlet eat?
The butterflies drink nectar from meadow flowers, and the caterpillars eat grasses.
?Why do common ringlets look so different?
Their colour and spots change a lot from place to place and between spring and summer.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Coenonympha california
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- California ringlet
Where the facts come from
- Coenonympha california (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 Kai Squires. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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