Submit Your Records & Comments Here
Small White pieris brassica
.jpg)
Small white - underside
Wingspan - 48 mm
The small white is a common butterfly in most areas and can be seen anywhere in gardens and allotments from Late March onwards.
Habit: the low weak flight of the butterfly is easy to spot. It will alight with folded wings, the pale yellowish colour often merging with the foliage of its chosen nectar plant, then slowly reveal its chalky wings to take the sun.
There can be a marked difference in size and under wing shade of the male and female butterfly, with occasional large females superficially similar to small male large white butterflies.
Double or even triple brooded: over winters as a a very distinct pale spotted pupa, which can be found harnessed on walls and fences in suitably sheltered places.
Larval Foodplant: Crucifers (cabbage) and nasturiums also wild mignonette
Status: not under threat in our area - numbers fluctuating year by year.
Climate: As the first true (non hibernating) spring emergent, the appearance of the small white may well set the tone for the rest of the emerging butterflies for the first part of the year. For instance, there is a coincidence between the pattern of two severe winters in 1989/90 - 1990/91 then 2009/10 - 2010/11 and the warm springs that followed. This is reflected in the almost identical emergence patterns of the small white for those periods. What this betokens scientifically is hard to judge, but it is apparent that there is some sort of anticipatory function that is evolved in to the insect from millennia of dealing with our variable weather patterns.
WH - White Hill Shoreham, BC - Bromley Common, Ha Hayes --BN Bromley North - Ey Eynsford - Orp Orpington Lull Lullingstone