Glanville fritillary
The Glanville fritillary is an orange butterfly with black and white checks, like a little chessboard. On its back wings there is a row of round black dots. It loves dry, sunny meadows.
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Fun facts
It spends most of its life as a caterpillar. The grown-up butterfly lives only a short time.
The caterpillars are spiny and black with tiny white dots and a reddish brown head.
Brothers and sisters stay together in a group after hatching from their eggs.
The caterpillars take a long rest through the winter and wake up in spring.
Lady Glanville loved butterflies so much that some relatives said she must be mad. Today a butterfly carries her name.
Most asked questions about Glanville fritillary
?What does the Glanville fritillary eat?
The butterfly drinks flower nectar. Its caterpillars eat plantain and speedwell leaves.
?How big is the Glanville fritillary?
Its wings are about 3.5 to 4 centimetres from tip to tip.
?Where can you see a Glanville fritillary?
In sunny, dry meadows across Europe and Asia. In Britain it lives mostly on the Isle of Wight.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Melitaea cinxia
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Glanville 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 Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium. CC BY-SA 2.0, 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 [email protected] and we will fix it.
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