Ilex hairstreak
The ilex hairstreak is a small brown butterfly with two tiny tails on its back wings. Underneath, its wings have orange half-moons with black edges and a row of broken white lines. It lives in woods.
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Fun facts
The females often have big orange patches on the top of their front wings.
Its caterpillars are pale green and about 2 centimetres long.
Ants take care of its caterpillars and stay close to them.
It has only one family of young each year, and the butterflies fly from late May to early August.
It can live in woods up to 1,600 metres high.
Most asked questions about Ilex hairstreak
?How big is the ilex hairstreak?
Its wings measure about 3 to 3.5 centimetres from tip to tip.
?What does the ilex hairstreak caterpillar eat?
Mostly oak, but also elm, buckthorn and plum relatives.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Satyrium ilicis
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Satyrium ilicis (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 sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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