Brush-Footed (Nymphalidae)Species profile · Polygonia c-album

Comma (Polygonia c-album)

The comma (Polygonia c-album) is a medium-sized orange-and-brown butterfly of woodland edges, hedgerows and gardens across Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia, and the easiest way to know one is its outline: the wing margins are so deeply scalloped that a resting comma looks like a torn dead leaf, and the dark underside of the hindwing carries the small white comma-shaped mark that gives the species its name.

By Dr. James WatuwaPublished August 29, 2018Updated September 16, 2026✓ Reviewed by Poppy Glendening

Comma Butterfly — Comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album) basking with its wings open; note the ragged, chewed-looking margins

Wingspan1.8–2.5 in (45–64 mm)

FamilyNymphalidae, subfamily Nymphalinae

Host plantsCommon nettle, hop, elm, willow, currants

RangeEurope, North Africa and temperate Asia to Japan

Adult lifespanAbout a month in summer; 8–9 months if it overwinters

Flight seasonMarch–October, with hibernated adults first

In this guide

Description and identification
Life cycle: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult
Where the comma butterfly lives
Host plants and diet
Behavior: basking, territories and hibernation
Similar butterflies and how to tell them apart
Quick facts
Did you know?
Pictures
Frequently asked questions

Description and identification

The comma is an anglewing, one of a small group of brush-footed butterflies whose wing margins are cut into deep, irregular notches. Like every member of the family it walks on four legs, the front pair being shortened into hairy brushes carried against the thorax. Polygonia c-album is the anglewing of Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia, and the only one most European observers will ever meet.

Adult butterfly

Wingspan: 1.8–2.5 in (45–64 mm), most individuals near 2.2 in (55 mm) — a little smaller than a red admiral.
Upperside: tawny to fiery orange, broken by bold black blotches and a smoky brown border, with small pale flecks just inside the outer edge of the forewing. The base of the wings is usually darker than the outer half.
Underside: a completely different butterfly. Both wings are a mottled mixture of chocolate, bark grey and olive, crossed by fine dark striations, and in the centre of each hindwing sits a crisp white mark shaped like a comma or a hook. That single mark is the diagnostic feature and the origin of both the English name and the Latin epithet c-album, meaning white C.
Wing shape: each wing is scalloped into sharp points and concave bays, so a settled comma has the ragged silhouette of a curled, half-eaten leaf.
Body: brown and furry, with a pale brown abdomen; antennae clubbed and tipped orange-brown.
Sexes: very similar. Females average slightly larger with broader, rounder forewings, but the overlap is wide and sexing a flying comma is unreliable.

The two seasonal forms

Commas come in two looks, and knowing them prevents a great deal of confusion. Larvae that develop quickly under the long days of early summer produce form hutchinsoni: a brighter, more golden butterfly with paler undersides and noticeably less deeply cut margins. These adults do not hibernate; they breed at once and give a second brood. Larvae that develop more slowly, or later in the year, produce the dark form, a richer red-brown insect with heavily jagged wings and near-black undersides. It is the dark form that survives the winter, and the one you see on a warm March day.

How to identify a comma in the field

Look first at the edge of the wing. An orange butterfly whose margins are torn and pointed rather than smooth or gently waved is a comma; the small tortoiseshell and the red admiral both have far more even outlines. Next, wait for it to close its wings: the comma turns instantly into a dead leaf, and a photograph will show the white comma at the centre of the hindwing.

Life cycle: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult

Comma Butterfly Larvae — CaterpillarFinal-instar larva: black and orange in front, with a broad chalk-white saddle over the rear half

Comma Butterflies — ChrysalisAngular pinkish-brown chrysalis hanging head-down, flecked with metallic spots

Polygonia C-album — AdultA freshly emerged adult; the deep notches in the margin are already fully formed

The comma has one of the more flexible life cycles in the family. Across most of its range there are two generations a year, with a partial third in warm southern summers and only one in the far north. The adult is the overwintering stage, so an individual butterfly may be on the wing in September and again the following April.

Eggs

The female lays her eggs singly, usually on the upper surface of a leaf or along the leaf edge of a young shoot, and she chooses plants growing in warm, sheltered, sunlit positions rather than deep shade. Each egg is about 0.7 mm across, green and barrel-shaped, with roughly ten raised vertical keels running from base to crown, and it turns yellowish and then grey as the larva darkens inside. Hatching takes one to three weeks. A single female may lay 250 or more eggs, spread thinly over many plants rather than in a batch.

Caterpillar

The young caterpillar is dark and inconspicuous and feeds on the underside of the leaf, then changes dramatically as it grows. The full-grown larva reaches about 1.4 in (35 mm) and is black and orange-brown along the front half, heavily armed with branched, pale spines, while the rear half of the back carries a broad, chalk-white patch. Sitting out in the open on a leaf, the combination reads convincingly as a fresh bird dropping, and unlike the gregarious larvae of the small tortoiseshell or the peacock, comma caterpillars live alone and spin no communal web. There are five instars over about four to five weeks, and the soft spines are harmless to handle.

Chrysalis

The larva wanders away from the food plant, spins a silk pad on a stem, twig or fence rail and hangs head-down. The resulting chrysalis is around 0.8 in (20 mm) long, angular and hump-backed, coloured pinkish-brown to pale green-grey, with a pair of pointed head projections and a row of small metallic silver or gold spots down the back. The overall effect is a shrivelled, dying leaf. The adult emerges after two to three weeks in summer.

Adult

Summer-form adults live roughly a month, mate quickly and are gone by early autumn. The dark autumn brood feeds heavily on ivy blossom and windfall fruit to build fat reserves, then hibernates from about October, hanging openly on a tree trunk or among ivy. Those butterflies fly again from late February or March, mate in spring and die in May or June, an adult life of eight to nine months. Our guide to how long butterflies live explains why an overwintering adult stretches so far beyond the usual few weeks.

Comma Butterfly Caterpillar — The bristly caterpillar rests in the open on a leaf, where the white saddle reads as a bird dropping

Where the comma butterfly lives

The comma is a butterfly of three continents. It is found across almost all of Europe apart from the far north of Scandinavia, along the mountains of northwest Africa, and eastward through Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Central Asia, the Himalaya, China, Korea and Japan. Several regional subspecies have been described, differing mainly in size and in the depth of the underside colour. It does not occur in the Americas, where closely related native anglewings take its place.

Its home is the edge rather than the interior of woodland: sunny rides, clearings, coppice, scrubby hedgerows, riverbanks, orchards, churchyards and mature gardens, from sea level up to around 5,000 ft (1,500 m) in the south of its range. What it needs is a combination of shelter, open patches of sun for basking, nettles or hops for the larvae, and a late supply of nectar and rotting fruit for the autumn brood.

The British story is one of the clearest recoveries in European butterfly recording. The comma was widespread in the nineteenth century, collapsed to a remnant population in the Welsh borders by about 1910, then expanded again from the 1930s onwards; today it is common through England and Wales and still spreading north into Scotland. The crash is usually linked to the decline of hop growing and the recovery to a switch onto common nettle. You can see where it sits among the other residents in our guide to the butterflies of the United Kingdom.

Host plants and diet

Caterpillar host plants. The comma is a generalist among the nettle feeders. Its principal host plant today is common nettle (Urtica dioica), but it also uses hop (Humulus lupulus), which was the classic host in hop-growing country, together with wych elm (Ulmus glabra), goat or pussy willow (Salix caprea), currants and gooseberry (Ribes) and, more locally, downy birch (Betula pubescens) and hazel. That breadth is unusual in the group: the peacock and the small tortoiseshell are tied almost entirely to nettle, and the ability to switch hosts is one reason the comma has expanded its range while several relatives have not. Larvae reared on different hosts also develop at different rates, which helps decide whether an individual becomes the pale summer form or the dark hibernating one.

Adult diet. Older accounts describe the comma as a sap and fruit feeder, but that is only the autumn half of the story. Spring and summer adults are keen flower visitors, working bramble blossom, thistles, knapweed, dandelion, hemp agrimony, marjoram, buddleia and, above all, ivy flowers late in the season. From August onwards they add the sugars they really need for hibernation: fermenting blackberries, fallen apples and plums, and sap runs on damaged trees. Commas will also take moisture and minerals from damp ground and from animal droppings. The mixed diet is why a comma is as likely to be found on a rotting pear in an old orchard as on a garden flower.

Comma Butterfly Host Plant — Common nettle, the caterpillar food plant that now carries most comma broods

Behavior: basking, territories and hibernation

Basking and perching. The comma is a sun-lover. It settles on bare wood, a warm leaf or a path with its wings spread flat, and it will use the same favoured perch day after day. Because the upperside is bright orange and the underside is dead-leaf brown, the butterfly can switch between being highly visible and effectively invisible simply by opening or closing its wings.

Territorial males. Males take up station in the afternoon on a sunlit leaf or twig at the edge of a clearing and fly out at anything that passes: a female, a rival comma, a bumblebee, even a falling leaf. After the chase they return to the same spot, and they defend these perches most vigorously in the hours before dusk. Our guide to how butterflies mate and reproduce sets out the usual courtship sequence.

Flight. The flight is quick and jerky, a burst of shallow flicking wingbeats followed by a flat glide on rigid wings. Commas are strong fliers and disperse readily, which is how the species colonises new ground so effectively.

Hibernation. This is the comma's signature behaviour. Unlike the small tortoiseshell and the peacock, which look for a dark cavity, a shed or a house, the comma normally overwinters fully exposed, clinging to a tree trunk, a bramble stem or an ivy-covered wall. Its camouflage is so good that a hibernating comma is far more often walked past than found. It can rouse on mild winter days and is one of the first butterflies recorded in spring.

Defence. Beyond camouflage the comma relies on a startle response: a bird that pins down what it thinks is a dead leaf gets an explosion of orange as the butterfly flicks its wings open and goes.

Similar butterflies and how to tell them apart

Species	Looks like	How to separate it from the comma
Eastern comma, Polygonia comma	Almost the same butterfly: orange, jagged, with a silver mark below	A North American species; the comma of Europe and Asia does not occur there. The underside mark of the eastern comma is thicker, with the ends swollen and turned inward
Question mark, Polygonia interrogationis	Larger anglewing with the same torn margins	North American, noticeably bigger, with short violet-edged tails on the hindwing and a silver mark split into a curve plus a separate dot, like a question mark
Small tortoiseshell, Aglais urticae	Similar size, orange ground colour, shares the nettle host plant	Margins only gently waved, never deeply cut; a row of blue crescents inside a dark border; bold black and cream blocks along the leading edge of the forewing
California tortoiseshell, Nymphalis californica	Orange above, dead-leaf brown below, angular wings	Western North American; the outer margin is angled rather than scalloped, and there is no white comma mark underneath
Southern comma, Polygonia egea	A genuine confusion species around the Mediterranean	Paler, more yellow-orange, with a much smaller and often Y-shaped white mark; restricted to warm, rocky, low-lying ground in southern Europe and the Near East

Quick facts

Scientific name	Polygonia c-album (Linnaeus, 1758)
Family	Nymphalidae (brush-footed butterflies), subfamily Nymphalinae
Wingspan	1.8–2.5 in (45–64 mm)
Distribution	Europe, northwest Africa and temperate Asia east to China and Japan
Habitat	Woodland edges and rides, hedgerows, scrub, riverbanks, orchards and gardens; to about 5,000 ft
Host plants	Common nettle, hop, wych elm, goat willow, currants and gooseberry, downy birch
Adult food	Nectar from bramble, thistle, knapweed, buddleia and ivy; tree sap and rotting fruit in autumn
Lifespan of adults	About a month for summer adults; eight to nine months for hibernating ones
Broods	Usually two a year, with a partial third in warm southern summers
Overwintering stage	Adult, hibernating in the open on trunks, stems and ivy
Defense	Dead-leaf camouflage, broken wing outline, startle flash of orange
Conservation status	Common and increasing; not threatened

Did you know?

The scientific name is a description, not a dedication: c-album is Latin for white C, and Polygonia means many angles, for the cut-about wing margins.
The pale summer form hutchinsoni was named after Emma Hutchinson, a nineteenth-century Herefordshire naturalist who reared commas in numbers and worked out that the two forms were one species.
Whether a caterpillar becomes the pale breeding form or the dark hibernating form is decided largely by day length and by how fast it grows, not by its parents.
Its recovery in Britain, from near-extinction around 1910 to a common garden butterfly today, is one of the few large-scale increases in a European butterfly and is closely tied to its willingness to change host plant.
Several unrelated groups have evolved torn margins, because a broken outline defeats a bird that is searching for a butterfly shape.

In summary

The comma, Polygonia c-album, is a 1.8–2.5 in orange butterfly with deeply ragged wing margins, found through Europe, northwest Africa and temperate Asia in woodland edges, hedgerows and gardens. Its caterpillar is a solitary black-and-orange bird-dropping mimic on nettle, hop, elm or willow; its chrysalis hangs like a withered leaf; and the adult exists in a pale summer form that breeds at once and a dark form that hibernates in the open for eight or nine months. To confirm one, wait until the wings close and look for the small white comma at the centre of the bark-coloured hindwing.

Comma butterfly pictures

Comma Butterfly Images — Nectaring adult, showing the pale spotting along the outer edge of the forewing

Frequently asked questions about the comma butterfly

Why is it called a comma butterfly?

The comma butterfly is named for the small white mark in the middle of the underside of each hindwing, which is shaped exactly like a comma or a hook. It is only visible when the butterfly rests with its wings closed. The same mark gives the species its scientific name, Polygonia c-album, meaning white C.

What does an adult comma butterfly look like?

An adult comma is a tawny orange butterfly with heavy black blotches and a wingspan of 1.8 to 2.5 inches. Its margins are cut into deep, ragged notches rather than being smooth. Underneath it is mottled bark brown with a white comma mark. Females average slightly larger than males, but the sexes are otherwise alike.

What does a comma butterfly caterpillar look like?

A comma caterpillar grows to about 1.4 inches and is black and orange-brown with branched pale spines, and the rear half of its back is covered by a broad chalk-white patch. Resting openly on a leaf, it looks like a fresh bird dropping. It feeds alone on nettle, hop, elm or willow and is harmless to handle.

What does a comma butterfly chrysalis look like?

The comma chrysalis is about 0.8 inches long, angular and hump-backed, and coloured pinkish-brown to pale grey-green with two pointed projections on the head. A row of small silver or gold metallic spots runs down its back. It hangs head-down from a stem and passes for a shrivelled dead leaf for two to three weeks.

Where are comma butterflies found?

Comma butterflies live across Europe, the mountains of northwest Africa and temperate Asia as far east as China and Japan. They favour woodland edges, sunny rides, hedgerows, riverbanks, orchards and gardens. They are not found in the Americas, where similar-looking anglewings such as the eastern comma and question mark replace them.

How long does a comma butterfly live?

A summer-generation comma lives roughly a month as an adult. Butterflies from the late brood live far longer: they feed heavily in autumn, hibernate from about October and fly again in spring, giving an adult life of eight to nine months. Counting the egg, caterpillar and chrysalis, a hibernating comma is close to a year old when it dies.

What do comma butterflies eat?

Adult commas drink nectar from bramble, thistle, knapweed, marjoram, buddleia and especially ivy blossom, and from late summer they switch to fermenting fruit such as fallen blackberries, apples and plums, plus tree sap. The caterpillars eat leaves, mainly common nettle and hop, and also elm, goat willow, currants and birch.

How does a comma butterfly camouflage itself?

The comma is disguised at every stage. The caterpillar mimics a bird dropping with its white saddle, the chrysalis looks like a shrivelled leaf, and the adult's dark, striated underside plus its torn wing outline make a resting butterfly indistinguishable from a dead leaf or a patch of bark, which is how it survives winter in the open.

How do you tell a comma from a small tortoiseshell?

Look at the wing edges. The comma's margins are deeply cut into sharp points and bays, while the small tortoiseshell's are only gently waved. The small tortoiseshell also has a row of blue crescents around its dark border and bold black-and-cream blocks on the front edge of the forewing, and its underside lacks any white comma mark.

Are comma butterflies rare?

No. The comma is common and increasing over most of its range. In Britain it nearly disappeared around 1910, then recovered from the 1930s onwards and is now a familiar garden butterfly across England and Wales that continues to spread north into Scotland, helped by its ability to use several different caterpillar food plants.