Southern small white
The southern small white is a white butterfly with black tips on its wings. It looks a lot like the common small white, but its dark wing spot is bigger and more square. It is slowly moving north into new countries.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Each front wing is 19 to 25 millimetres long.
It first crossed north of the Alps into France and Germany in 2008.
It reached the Netherlands in 2015 and Suffolk in England in 2025.
Its pupa is whitish with a pinkish tint, not green like the small white's.
It flies from March to October, depending on where it lives.
Most asked questions about Southern small white
?How can you tell the southern small white from the small white?
Its dark spot on the front wing is bigger and squarer, and the dark wing tip reaches further down the edge.
?What does the southern small white eat?
The caterpillars eat cabbage family plants such as candytuft and mustard.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pieris mannii
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Pieridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Pieridae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
Where the facts come from
- Pieris mannii (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 Adrian198cm. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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