Leaf-shaped wings with a sharp hook at the centre of each margin, never opened at rest, and one rust spot per wing
Brimstone — the leaf mimicry works from every angle.
Nature · Insects & other invertebrates
Brimstone
One brood; adults live up to about a year · wingspan 60–74 mm
Gonepteryx rhamni — Pieridae
A butter-yellow butterfly with leaf-shaped, hook-tipped wings, often the first British butterfly seen in a new year because it hibernates as an adult among ivy and bramble. The male is sulphur-yellow, the female a much paler greenish-white; both carry a small rust-orange spot in the centre of each wing and always rest with the wings closed, when they are indistinguishable from a leaf. Its caterpillars eat only buckthorn and alder buckthorn, and the butterfly is the leading candidate for the origin of the word "butterfly".
How to spot them
- ▸Wings shaped like a leaf, each with a sharp central point or hook, never held open at rest
- ▸Male sulphur-yellow; female very pale greenish-white and often mistaken for a large white
- ▸A single small rust-orange spot in the centre of each of the four wings
- ▸Strongly veined underside, so a hibernating adult in ivy looks exactly like a dead leaf
- ▸Seen flying in February and March sunshine, well before any other butterfly is out
How to know it
The male is sulphur-yellow and the female almost white, and the butter colour is the likeliest source of the word 'butterfly'
Brimstone, whose old names include butter-coloured fly.
Its caterpillars will eat only two shrubs, both members of the same family, one of which gives it its specific epithet
Brimstone — buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) and alder buckthorn (Frangula alnus).
Lives roughly a year as an adult, longer than any other British butterfly, hibernating among ivy and bramble
Brimstone — a single generation spans one summer, a winter and the next spring.
Often the first butterfly on the wing in a British year, flying in February sunshine
Brimstone, the emblem of Butterfly Conservation.
Its generic name means 'angle wing', from the point on each hindwing
Brimstone — Gonepteryx, from Greek gonia (angle) and pteron (wing).
Quick-fire facts
- •Gonepteryx rhamni: Gonepteryx means 'angled wing'; rhamni is from Rhamnus, the buckthorn
- •The two larval foodplants are purging buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), on chalk and limestone, and alder buckthorn (Frangula alnus), on damp acid soils
- •Adults may live ten to twelve months, the longest adult life of any British butterfly
- •It hibernates as an adult, usually deep in evergreen cover such as ivy, holly or bramble
- •The name 'butterfly' is widely held to derive from this species' butter-yellow male; other explanations exist
- •Butterfly Conservation, which uses a stylised butterfly as its logo, reports the brimstone spreading north as its foodplants are planted more widely
- •Only the male is yellow; the female's greenish-white makes her easy to confuse with a large white in flight
- •'Brimstone' is the old English word for sulphur
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Butterfly Conservation — Brimstone
- Paul D. Brock — Britain's Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland