Art Deco Butterflies

At about two inches wide, the Buckeye Butterfly (Junonia coenia) is not our biggest butterfly, but it’s surely one of our most intricately colored. It’s officially called the “Common” Buckeye, but there’s nothing common about it in my book.

With bold colors and clean lines, the buckeye could be an Art déco brooch. The basically brown butterfly—sometimes with tinges of turquoise—has two mesmerizing eyespots of various sizes on each wing. The forewings have orange corporal-like stripes and slashes of white. The fancifully colored hindwing eyespots contain black, blue, pink, orange, brown, and tan. The buckeye is named for these eyespots.

According to North Carolina State Extension, it is “one of the brushfooted butterflies, so called because the front legs are brush-like appendages. These butterflies stand on the second and third pairs of legs and appear to have only four legs because the “brushes” are usually folded neatly against the thorax.”

Buckeyes are found throughout most of the US, except in the northwest, and into Mexico and the Caribbean. They migrate south in winter collecting in large numbers in peninsular Florida and point south.

Mated females lay single eggs on the upper surface of plants the caterpillars will eat, aka ‘larval hosts plants.” The eggs look like tiny green beachballs.

Larval host plants include plantain (Plantago spp.), that broad leaf common lawn weed that grows in a rosette. Also, plants in the snapdragon family, such as wild petunia (Ruellia), and false foxglove (Agalinis purpurea)—an interesting semi-parasitic plant that blooms late in the fall with pink, foxglove-like, trumpet flowers found growing in unmown meadows. The caterpillar will also eat toadflax (Linaria spp). These plants contain toxins that make the larvae unpalatable to predators.

The caterpillars have an orange head, and are mostly black with spiny tufts, and orange and bright blue dots.

Adults sip nectar from various plants and can be seen at mud puddle margins, collecting minerals.

Buckeyes prefer habitats of open fields, meadows, gardens, and roadsides instead of woodlands. They overwinter as adults or caterpillars. This is unusual because they do not overwinter as pupae in a chrysalis like many butterflies.

The buckeye population is rated as ‘secure.’ It is a prolific butterfly because it has several generations per year. Additionally, they have several larval host plants, and the adults feed on many kinds of flowers. That makes them a hearty butterfly. But consider that treating grass with pesticides, removing their host plants, and/or spraying caterpillars will reduce or remove these flying works of art from your area.