West Virginia white
The West Virginia white is a small white butterfly with wings so thin you can almost see through them. It lives in shady, damp woods in North America. It only flies for about one month each spring.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The mother lays just one egg on each leaf of its food plant.
A weed called garlic mustard tricks it. The butterfly lays eggs on it by mistake, but the caterpillars cannot eat it and do not survive.
It likes to stay in the shade of the forest and hardly ever crosses open fields.
It can stay a pupa for several seasons before it comes out as a butterfly in spring.
It has only one family each year.
Most asked questions about West Virginia white
?Why is the West Virginia white butterfly in trouble?
Its forests are being cut down, and the weed garlic mustard tricks it into laying eggs where the caterpillars cannot survive.
?When can you see the West Virginia white?
Only for about a month in early spring, usually in April or May.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pieris virginiensis
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Pieridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Pieridae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Pieris virginiensis (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 Beatriz Moisset. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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