Appearance
The upperside forewings are a bright orange with a dark outside edge border and with eight or nine black spots. The hindwings are dark with an orange border.Some females also have a row of blue spots inside the orange border and are known as form "caeruleopunctata". The undersides are patterned in a similar way but are paler. The black spots on the forewings are outlined in yellow and the dark colouring is replaced by a pale brownish grey.
The hindwings are the same brown/grey colour with small black dots and a narrow orange border. The caterpillars are usually green, but some have a purple stripe down the middle of the back and along each side.
Naming
According to Guppy and Shepard, its specific name "phlaeas" is said to be derived either from the Greek "phlego", "to burn up" or from the Latin "floreo", "to flourish".
Behavior
The eggs are laid singly and conspicuously on the upperside of food plant leaves and the young caterpillar feeds on the underside of the leaf creating "windows" by leaving the upper epidermis of the leaf untouched.Pupation takes place in the leaf litter and the pupa is thought to be tended by ants. There are between two and three broods a year, fewer further north. In exceptionally good years, a fourth brood sometimes occurs in the south and adults can still be seen flying into November. The species overwinters as a caterpillar.
Habitat
It is found in a wide variety range of habitats from chalk downlands, heathland, woodland clearings to churchyards and waste ground in cities.References:
Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.
