Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele)

In this guide

1. Description and identification
2. Life cycle: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult
3. Where the great spangled fritillary lives
4. Host plants and diet
5. Behavior: aestivation, patrolling and flight
6. Similar butterflies and how to tell them apart
7. Quick facts
8. Did you know?
9. Pictures
10. Frequently asked questions

Description and identification

The great spangled fritillary is one of the larger brush-footed butterflies of North America and the commonest of the big orange fritillaries in the genus Speyeria. Like all brush-foots it walks on four legs, the reduced front pair folded against the thorax like a pair of small brushes. "Fritillary" comes from the Latin fritillus, a dice box, a reference to the chequered pattern on the wings; "spangled" refers to the silver spots underneath.

Adult butterfly

• Wingspan: 2.4–3.5 in (62–88 mm), among the biggest butterflies in an eastern meadow and easily mistaken at a glance for a monarch.
• Upperside: bright orange to orange-brown, darkened towards the body, and marked with a set pattern of black lines: short dashes and curved bars in the inner half of the wing, then a row of black chevrons, a row of round black dots and a line of black crescents along the margin.
• Underside forewing: pale orange repeating the upper pattern, with a few silver spots near the tip.
• Underside hindwing: the identification feature. The disc is a warm cinnamon or reddish brown scattered with large, mirror-bright silver spots, and beyond them runs a broad pale yellow or buff submarginal band that is wider than the row of silver triangles sitting in it. This wide band is the single best mark for separating the species from its relatives.
• Body: brown and furred, with a thick orange-brown coat of hair on the thorax and long orange-clubbed antennae.
• Sexes: genuinely different. Males are smaller and a cleaner, brighter orange, and the veins in the middle of the forewing are thickened and blackened by patches of scent scales. Females are larger, a duller tawny or smoky orange, often washed with dark scaling near the base, and their black markings are heavier.

How to identify a great spangled fritillary in the field

Look for a large, strong-flying orange butterfly cruising low and straight across a damp meadow or a woodland clearing between late June and early September, usually settling on thistle, milkweed or coneflower. Its flight is fast and purposeful, not the drifting glide of a monarch, and the pattern is made of dashes and dots rather than black-outlined veins. When it lands and closes its wings, check the hindwing underside: silver spangles plus a wide pale band means great spangled fritillary. A narrow band, barely wider than the silver triangles, means the very similar Aphrodite fritillary. No silver at all means the variegated fritillary.

Life cycle: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult

There is a single generation each year, and it is spread across twelve months in an unusual way: the adults fly in summer, the eggs are laid in early autumn, and the caterpillar spends the entire winter unfed.

Eggs

In late August and September the female searches the ground rather than the plants. She drops or glues her eggs one at a time onto dry leaf litter, dead stems, moss and soil close to violets, and very often not on a violet at all — by that season the violet leaves she is aiming for have usually withered away. Each egg is a small cone about 1 mm high, ribbed from base to tip, cream to pale yellow when fresh and quickly darkening to tan or grey-brown. A single female may scatter several hundred over a few weeks. Hatching follows in two to three weeks.

Caterpillar

The newly hatched caterpillar does something almost no other butterfly larva does: it eats its eggshell and then nothing else at all. It crawls into the leaf litter and enters diapause as a first instar, surviving the whole winter on the reserves packed into the egg. When violets push up in spring it wakes, climbs a plant and begins to feed, mostly after dark, hiding in litter during the day. The mature larva is velvety black with rows of branched spines that are orange to orange-brown at the base and black towards the tip, and it reaches about 2 in (50 mm). The spines are stiff bristles, not stingers, and the caterpillar is harmless to handle.

Chrysalis

After roughly six weeks of feeding the larva spins a silk pad in a shelter of curled leaves and hangs head-down. The chrysalis is about 0.9 in (22 mm) long, plump and rounded like a shelled peanut, glossy, and mottled dark chestnut brown to nearly black with faint orange patches and rows of low points along the back. It looks like a shrivelled leaf. The adult emerges after two to three weeks.

Adult butterfly

Males appear first, from about mid-June, and females follow one to two weeks later. Males wear out quickly and are scarce by August; females can still be flying in mid-September. That gives females one of the longer adult lives among North American butterflies — two months or more — because most of it is spent not flying at all, as the next section explains.

Where the great spangled fritillary lives

The species is spread right across temperate North America. It flies from southern British Columbia and Alberta east through Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, south through New England, the Midwest and the Appalachians to northern Georgia, and west across the northern plains to the Rockies, the Great Basin and northern California. It is absent from the Deep South lowlands, the Gulf Coast and the Southwestern deserts. Several regional subspecies are recognised, and the western ones tend to be paler with a less contrasting underside band.

Its habitat is open, moist and flowery: wet meadows, prairie, streamside pastures, powerline cuts, roadside verges, old fields and the sunlit edges and clearings of deciduous woodland. The requirement is a combination the landscape does not always provide — violets growing in the shade or half-shade for the caterpillars, and a good supply of tall summer flowers in the open nearby for the adults. Where meadows are mown in midsummer, or where woods are too dark for violets, the butterfly disappears even though it looks like suitable country.

It shares those meadows with a familiar cast of other brush-foots: the small orange pearl crescent dancing low over the grass, the eyespotted common buckeye on bare ground and paths, and, in a shrinking handful of tallgrass prairies, the threatened regal fritillary.

Host plants and diet

Caterpillar host plants. Violets, and nothing else. The caterpillars eat the leaves of many Viola species — common blue violet (Viola sororia), woolly blue violet, northern white violet, Canada violet, birdfoot violet, downy yellow violet and others, including the common lawn violets of the eastern states. No violets means no great spangled fritillaries, which is why this butterfly vanishes from tidy landscapes and why our guide to butterfly host plants matters more here than any nectar border.

Adult diet. Adults are enthusiastic and rather heavy nectar feeders, preferring tall flowers with broad heads they can cling to. Common favourites are common and swamp milkweed, bull and pasture thistles, purple coneflower, Joe-Pye weed, ironweed, bergamot, dogbane, mountain mint, verbena, blazing star and, in gardens, buddleia and zinnias. They also take moisture and salts from damp gravel and from rotting fruit.

Behavior: aestivation, patrolling and flight

The summer sleep. The most remarkable thing about this butterfly is what the females do with July. They emerge, mate within a few days, and then largely disappear: they retreat into shade, become inactive and hold their eggs undeveloped through the hottest, driest weeks in a reproductive dormancy called aestivation. In late August, as the nights cool, they become active again, their ovaries mature, and they spend the rest of their lives egg-laying. The pay-off is timing — the eggs hatch just before winter, so the tiny caterpillars are in place to exploit the first flush of spring violets.

Patrolling males. Males do not hold territories. They fly a low, tireless, more or less continuous search over open ground during the warm part of the day, investigating any orange object and dropping onto females that they find resting in the grass. Early in the season a meadow can look as though it holds only males, because that is exactly the stage the population is in.

Flight. The flight is fast, strong and fairly straight, a few feet above the vegetation, with rapid wingbeats broken by short glides. A fritillary that is disturbed simply powers away across the field rather than circling.

Roosting and defense. Adults roost in tall grass and shrubs overnight. The butterfly is edible to birds and relies on speed, on the broken pattern of the upperside, and on the underside, which — closed against dead vegetation — reads as brown leaf rather than butterfly. Wings with beak-shaped notches in the margin are common by late summer. Adults live roughly three to four weeks in the case of males, and often twice that, thanks to aestivation, in the case of females; our guide to how long butterflies live puts those figures in context.

Similar butterflies and how to tell them apart

Quick facts

Did you know?

• Female fritillaries are notoriously careless egg-layers, scattering eggs on dead leaves and stems near violets rather than on the plant. The caterpillar has to find the food itself in spring, which is why the species needs violet-rich ground rather than a single violet plant.
• Aestivation — the summer equivalent of hibernation — lets a female skip the drought weeks when nectar is scarce and lay her eggs at the moment that gives her offspring the best start.
• The name records the wings twice over: "fritillary" from fritillus, a Roman dice box with a chequered pattern, and "spangled" from the sheet of mirror-silver spots underneath.
• The Scottish band Cocteau Twins opened their 1985 EP Echoes in a Shallow Bay with a track called "Great Spangled Fritillary"; every song on that record is named after a butterfly or moth.
• Silver spangles are structural, not pigment. The scales are built to reflect light like tiny mirrors, which is why they flash white in sunshine and look dull grey in shade.
• Great spangled fritillaries are among the best pollinators of midsummer prairie flowers, because they are large enough to carry a real load of pollen and range widely between flower patches.

In summary

The great spangled fritillary is a big, strong-flying orange butterfly of moist meadows and woodland edges across southern Canada and the northern two-thirds of the United States. Males are bright orange with black-scaled forewing veins, females larger and duskier, and both show large silver spangles and a wide pale band on the hindwing underside — the mark that separates them from the Aphrodite fritillary. Its caterpillars eat violets and nothing else, hatch in autumn, sleep through winter without feeding and pupate in early summer, and its females sleep through the heat of July before laying eggs in September. Protect the violets and leave the meadow uncut, and the butterfly looks after itself.

Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly pictures

Frequently asked questions about the great spangled fritillary butterfly

What does a great spangled fritillary caterpillar look like?

It is velvety black with rows of branched spines that are orange or orange-brown at the base and black towards the tip, and it grows to about two inches. It hatches in autumn, overwinters without feeding, then eats violet leaves in spring, usually at night. The spines are stiff bristles and do not sting.

How do you tell a male great spangled fritillary from a female?

Males are smaller and a brighter, cleaner orange, and the veins in the middle of the forewing are thickened and darkened by patches of scent scales. Females are noticeably larger, a duller tawny or smoky orange, often with dark dusting near the wing base, and their black dashes and spots are heavier.

When are great spangled fritillaries most active?

There is one brood a year. Males start flying about mid-June, females appear one to two weeks later, and adults can be seen until mid-September. Activity peaks on warm, sunny mornings and afternoons when thistles, milkweeds and coneflowers are in bloom. Females are much less visible in July, when they are aestivating.

What is the average wingspan of a great spangled fritillary?

Wingspan ranges from about 2.4 to 3.5 inches, or 62 to 88 millimetres, which makes it one of the larger butterflies in an eastern North American meadow and close to the size of a monarch. Females average larger than males, and western populations tend to run slightly bigger than eastern ones.

What is the key feature for identifying an adult great spangled fritillary?

Look at the underside of the hindwing. It carries large, mirror-bright silver spots on a cinnamon-brown ground, and beyond them a broad pale yellow submarginal band that is clearly wider than the row of silver triangles sitting inside it. That wide band separates the species from the near-identical Aphrodite fritillary.

What does the chrysalis of a great spangled fritillary look like?

The chrysalis is about nine tenths of an inch long, plump and rounded rather like a shelled peanut, glossy, and mottled dark chestnut brown to nearly black with faint orange or buff markings. It hangs head-down from a silk pad inside a shelter of curled leaves and opens after roughly two to three weeks.

What do great spangled fritillary caterpillars eat?

Violets only. The larvae feed on the leaves of many Viola species, including common blue violet, woolly blue violet, Canada violet and birdfoot violet. They hatch in autumn, spend the winter dormant in leaf litter without eating, and begin feeding on tender new violet leaves as soon as the plants appear in spring.

Where do great spangled fritillaries lay their eggs?

Not on the host plant, as a rule. In late August and September the female drops or glues her eggs singly onto dead leaves, dry stems, moss and soil near where violets grow, because the violet leaves themselves have usually withered by then. One female may scatter several hundred eggs over a few weeks.

How long does a great spangled fritillary live?

Males generally live three to four weeks. Females live much longer, often eight to ten weeks, because they spend the hottest part of summer in a dormant state called aestivation with their eggs undeveloped, then become active again in late August to lay. From egg to adult the cycle takes a full year.

Is the great spangled fritillary poisonous or endangered?

Neither. The butterfly is palatable to birds and harmless to people, and the caterpillar's spines cannot sting. The species remains common and secure across most of its range, although it disappears locally where woodland violets are lost or where meadows are mown in midsummer before the adults have finished breeding.