Narrow green-banded swallowtail
The narrow green-banded swallowtail is a big black butterfly with a shining blue or green band across its wings. The males have a blue band and the females a greener one. Even though it is called a swallowtail, it has no tails on its wings.
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Fun facts
Females are a bit bigger than males.
In warm Africa it can fly all year round, but most of all from November to February.
Its caterpillar is green on top and whitish underneath.
It belongs to a group of 15 similar black butterflies with green bands.
Most asked questions about Narrow green-banded swallowtail
?How big is the narrow green-banded swallowtail?
Its wings measure about 75 to 95 millimetres from tip to tip.
?What does its caterpillar eat?
Leaves of citrus trees and some of their wild relatives.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Papilio nireus
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Africa
- Also known as
- Green-banded swallowtail, African blue-banded swallowtail
Where the facts come from
- Papilio nireus (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.
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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