Celastrina ladon: Blue Brilliance of Spring Azure Butterfly

Summary: Celastrina ladon, a small New World butterfly known in English as Spring Azure, bedazzles gardeners with the brilliant blue of its tiny open wings.

wing undersides of Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon), Ballfield Meadow, Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park, King County, northwestern Washington: Walter Siegmund, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Celastrina ladon is a New World butterfly native to North America and northwestern South America.

In North America, Celastrina ladon ranges from eastern Alaska eastward and southward across southern Canada and the continental, or Lower 48, United States to northwestern and north central Mexico.

In northwestern South America, Celastrina ladon claims homelands in the mountains of Colombia.

Celastrina ladon is known commonly in English as Spring Azure butterfly.

Spring Azure butterflies prefer old fields, marshes, and swamps as well as openings and edges of deciduous woodlands.

Favorite host plants for Celastrina ladon's larval, or caterpillar, stage include flowering dogwood trees and New Jersey tea shrubs.

Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) is a New World tree native to eastern North America from Canada southeastward to northern Florida and southwestward to Texas. Disjunct, or separate, communities occur in Mexico's eastern states of Nuevo León and Vera Cruz.

New Jersey tea (Ceanothus americana) is a New World shrub native to eastern North America from Canada to the Gulf Coast states.

In addition to sharing larval stage's partiality for New Jersey tea, Spring Azure butterflies favor nectar from blackberries and common milkweed.

Blackberry (Rubus spp.) is an Old World deciduous (Latin: deciduus, "that which falls off") shrub claiming naturalized homelands globally, including in the United States.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is a New World flowering plant native from western Canada's prairie province of Saskatchewan eastward across Canada and southward to the Gulf Coast states, excluding Florida.

As a member of the Lycaenidae, or gossamer-winged, family, Spring Azure butterfly present brilliant, delicate wings.

Black edging of outer forewings distinguishes females from males, both of which exhibit brilliant blue uppersides.

Undersides, as revealed by closed wings, appear as light, dark or brownish grey, dotted with black blotches and spots.

As small butterflies, Spring Azures maximize wingspans at 7/8 to 1 3/8 inches (2.2 to 3.5 centimeters).

As mud puddlers, male Spring Azure butterflies seek damp ground and mud, from which they extract nutrients such as salts from fluids in the wet soil.

Spring Azure males haunt the bare patch of muddy ground at the shady western foot of the backyard retaining wall extending from my house’s northwest corner.

The brilliant blue of their wings flash captivatingly as my Spring Azure guests enjoy their muddy repast.

male Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon), Mer Bleue Conservation Area, east of Ottawa, Eastern Ontario, east central Canada: D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon) wing undersides, Ballfield Meadow, Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park, King County, northwestern Washington: Walter Siegmund, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celastrina_ladon_03722.JPG

male Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon), Mer Bleue Conservation Area, east of Ottawa, Eastern Ontario, east central Canada: D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spring_Azure-male.jpg

For further information:

“Cyclicity.” Encyclopedia of Life > Celastrina ladon Spring Azure > Details.
Available @ http://www.eol.org/data_objects/28825320

Marriner, Derdriu. “Chives (Allium schoenoprasum): Bon Appétit! For Azure, Blue, Marblewing, and Sulphur Butterflies.” Wizzley > Plants & Gardening > Plants > Herb Plants.
Available @ http://wizzley.com/chives-allium-schoenoprasum/

Mitchell, John Hanson. A Field Guide to Your Own Back Yard. Woodstock VT: The Countryman Press, 2014.

“Spring Azure (Celastrina ladon).” Gardens with Wings.
Available @ http://www.gardenswithwings.com/butterfly/Spring%20Azure/index.html

"Spring Azure Celastrina ladon (Cramer, 1780)." Butterflies and Moths of North America > Species. Butterfly and Moth Information Network: Kelly Lotts and Thomas Naberhaus. Web. www.butterfliesandmoths.org.
Available @ http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Celastrina-ladon