Spring Azure

The Spring Azure (Celastrina ladon) is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family. It is found in North America from Alaska and Canada south of the tundra through most of the United States except the Texas coast, southern plain and peninsular Florida; south in the mountains to Colombia.

The Spring Azure butterfly provides another good example of the difficulties associated with identifying blue butterflies. This is a very common species across the United States. Most accounts of the Spring Azure start with the fact that it is one of the first spring butterflies. More advanced accounts of the species add that lepidopterists currently disagree on whether to split the species into two different groups, depending on seasonality, spring azure and summer azure.

The above picture shows the basic Spring Azure characteristics from a size view. There is a superficial chevron mark on each wing that sits below a pattern of small dark spots. The dark pattern above the spots is also an identifying clue that differentiates it from the Silvery Blue.

Since the publication of a monograph on the
Lycaenopsis Group of Lycaenid genera in 1983 by Eliot & Kawazoe, ladon has been considered by some taxon authorities to be a subspecies of Celastrina argiolus (Linnaeus, 1758). Other authorities still consider C. ladon and related species C. neglecta and C. serotina, to be "full" species.

Posted in: Lycaenidae,S,Spring Azure