The Melissa blue (''Plebejus melissa'') is a

butterfly Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprise ...

of the family

Lycaenidae Lycaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies (behind Nymphalidae, brush-footed butterflies), with over 6,000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterf ...

. It is found in western North America, from

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

Taxonomy

The Karner blue (''Plebejus samuelis'') was traditionally considered a subspecies of the Melissa blue, and was described by the

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

lepidopterist Lepidopterology ()) is a branch of entomology concerning the scientific study of moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies. Someone who studies in this field is a lepidopterist or, archaically, an aurelian. Origins Post-Renaissance, t ...

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...

Description

The

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan o ...

is 22–35 mm. Below, the hindwing orange submarginal band, often with distal iridescent blue points, help to distinguish this species from the more muted colors and markings of the similar ''

Plebejus idas ''Plebejus idas'', the Idas blue or northern blue, is a butterfly of the family Lycaenidae. It belongs to the subfamily of Polyommatinae (Babendreier, 2003). Subspecies Subspecies include the following: * ''Plebejus idas acreon'' (Fabricius, ...

''. The marginal line is wider where the veins intersect. The fringes are not checked.

Behavior and diet

The butterfly flies from April to August depending on the location. The larvae feed on ''

Lupinus ''Lupinus'', commonly known as lupin, lupine, or regionally bluebonnet etc., is a genus of plants in the legume family Fabaceae. The genus includes over 199 species, with centers of diversity in North and South America. Smaller centers occur ...

'', '' Medicago'' and '' Lotus'' species.

References

External links

*
Butterflies and Moths of North America
Plebejus Butterflies described in 1873 Butterflies of North America Taxa named by William Henry Edwards {{Lycaenidae-stub