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Sticker of European meadow fritillary
Bug card No. 1593 of 4,939

European meadow fritillary

Melitaea parthenoides
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesGardens and meadows6 legs

The European meadow fritillary is a small orange butterfly with thin black lines on its wings, a bit like a stained glass window. It lives in the south-west of Europe and loves warm, sunny places.

Lives in
South-western Europe, from Spain and Portugal to France, Switzerland and southern Germany
Wingspan
2.8 to 3.4 cm (1.1 to 1.3 in)
Top speed
about 11 km/h (6.8 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. Butterflies cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Grown-up butterflies sip nectar from flowers. Its caterpillars eat plantain leaves, mostly ribwort plantain.
For real!Photo of European meadow fritillary
Picture by Joan Carles Hinojosa Galisteo. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

European meadow fritillary wings about 3.4 cm tip to tip (1.3 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
wings as wide as 6 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 34 seconds

How big is European meadow fritillary compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

1

In warm, dry places it has two families a year. One flies in May and June, and the next in August and September.

2

High up in the mountains summer is short, so there is only one family a year, flying in June and July.

3

Its caterpillars eat plantain, a common little weed with long leaves that grows in meadows and along paths.

4

It looks almost exactly like its cousin the heath fritillary, but its black lines are thinner and its orange bands are wider.

you asked

Most asked questions about European meadow fritillary

?Where does the meadow fritillary live?

In south-western Europe: Spain, Portugal, France, parts of Switzerland and Germany, and the Italian Alps.

?How big is the meadow fritillary?

Small. Its open wings measure about 3 centimetres from tip to tip.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Melitaea parthenoides
Group
Butterflies
Family
Nymphalidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
Lives on
Europe
Also known as
Meadow fritillary

Where the facts come from

  1. Melitaea parthenoides (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Joan Carles Hinojosa Galisteo. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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More from the same group: Butterflies

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