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Kelly’s Field Notes
Common Name: Painted Lady
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Nymphalidae (brushfoot or four-footed butterflies)
Genus: Vanessa (about 22 species worldwide, all are strongly migratory (Wahlberg et al., 2005))
Species: Vanessa cardui (Linnaeus, 1758) The Painted lady is the most widespread butterfly on Earth, found on every continent except Antarctica (Talavera et al., 2024).
Description:
Adult Painted Ladies have a wingspan between 5.1 to 7.3 cm (2 to 2.9 in). They are not sexually dimorphic, meaning males and females look identical (Talavera et al., 2024; UK Butterflies). The upper surface of both wings is a mottled orange overlaid with black patterning. The forewing (upper wing) apex (top corner) is black with a row of white spots (this is how we identify them in the field!) and a cluster of black spots in the orange area of the rest of the wing. The hindwing (lower wing) has four small black spots along the outer margin which are sometimes faintly blue-centered.
The underside of the wing contains a complex patchwork of pinks, greys, tans, and blacks, with four distinct eyespots on the hindwing, each ringed in black and blue-centered. Newly emerged adults often show a salmon-pink flush across the wings that fades within a few days (UK Butterflies).
Painted lady caterpillars are dark gray or olive-green with yellow side stripes and covered in branching black spines. In their host plant they create a loose silk tent to keep them safe while they feed. Their chrysalis is about 2.4 cm in length (0.95 in), pale gray to tan with rows of small metallic spots along the abdomen (UK Butterflies).
Life Cycle:
Females lay single green ribbed eggs on the upper surface of host plant leaves, but a female may lay 300 or more eggs over her lifespan . The HOSTS database records more than 300 larval host plant species, spanning at least 25 plant families (Robinson et al., 2010). This makes the Painted Lady the most polyphagous (utilizes many different plants) butterfly in the world (Scott, 1986; Janz, 2005). Thistles (Cirsium, Carduus, Onopordon), mallows (Malvaceae), legumes (Fabaceae), and nettles (Urticaceae)are among the most commonly used (Scott, 1986; Robinson et al., 2010). Painted Lady caterpillars are able to utilize this wide array of plants due to an expanded family of UDP-glucosyltransferase detoxifying genes in their genome. What this means for Painted Ladies is that they have evolved a broader chemical toolkit for neutralizing plant defenses than almost any other butterfly (Celorio-Mancera et al., 2016)!
Their larval stage (caterpillars) lasts about two weeks depending on weather. Their pupal stage typically only lasts another week to ten days. Adults live two to four weeks. The complete egg-to-adult cycle can be as short as four to five weeks in high summer heat, allowing multiple generations per year wherever conditions are suitable (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Scott, 1986). Adults drink nectar from a wide variety of flowers, with a strong preference for thistles, asters, coneflowers at about waist height or taller. They are also avid puddlers, gathering salts from damp soil and other wet sources (sometimes animal feces!).
Painted ladies do not diapause (think of this as bug hibernation, like bears)! Instead of shutting down for the winter, they simply keeps moving toward warmth and breeding resources, running through up to 8 to 10 generations per year across its full annual migratory loop (see the section below on migration) (Stefanescu et al., 2016; Talavera et al., 2023). In North America, overwintering adults are only found in the warmest parts of the southwest (southern California, Arizona, Texas, Mexico).
Migration:
The annual migratory circuit of Painted Ladies is the longest known of any butterfly. The full Palearctic-African loop spans approximately 15,000 km (9,320 mi) in latitude, moving from sub-Saharan Africa north through the Sahara, across the Mediterranean, and into northern Europe (then back again!) through the succession of up to 10 generations across the year (Stefanescu et al., 2016; Talavera et al., 2023). No individual butterfly makes more than one leg of this trip. Like Monarchs, their journey is completed relay-style across generations
How do we know this? The southward autumn crossing of the Sahara, 4,000 km (2,485 mi) from temperate Europe to the Sahel in a single flight, was confirmed by hydrogen isotope analysis of wing tissue and pollen metabarcoding (Stefanescu et al., 2016). Spring migrants returning to Europe carry pollen signatures from Moroccan and West African wildflowers, proving that this is a round trip.
In 2024, Talavera and colleagues documented something even more remarkable: a transatlantic crossing. Ten Painted Ladies found on the coast of French Guiana had tattered wings suggesting a long journey. Isotope analysis and pollen metabarcoding traced them to West Africa, and wind trajectory modeling showed they had ridden Saharan trade winds westward across at least 4,200 km (2,609 mi) of open ocean in five to eight days. Genomic analysis further suggested many had originated as caterpillars in Western Europe, making their full journey over 7,000 km (4,349 mi). This is the longest recorded transoceanic flight of any insect (Talavera et al., 2024)!
Super Powers:
Flight - butterflies obviously fly but given this species amazing migration ability, this is a next level flight ability!
Eats Anything - between the huge amount of host plants and the detoxifying genes this species impressive appetite beats out all other butterflies.
Radar - autumn migration years in North America can be so enormous that migrating Painted Lady swarms show up as moving clouds on National Weather Service Doppler radar, as famously documented over Colorado in October 2017 (Westbrook, 2008).
The Energizer Butterfly - Painted ladies don’t diapause. Instead of hibernating they stay in perpetual motion
Compass in the Wing - Painted Ladies use a time-compensated sun compass to maintain migratory direction, requiring a direct view of the sky (same for Monarchs and several migratory birds) (Mouritsen and Frost, 2002).
References:
Celorio-Mancera, M. de la P., Wheat, C. W., Vogel, H., Söderlind, L., Janz, N., & Nylin, S. (2016). Evolutionary history of host use, rather than plant phylogeny, determines gene expression in a generalist butterfly. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 13, 198. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-13-198
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Painted lady butterfly. In Britannica.com. Retrieved September 4, 2026, from https://www.britannica.com/animal/painted-lady-butterfly
Janz, N. (2005). The relationship between habitat selection and preference for adult and larval food resources in the polyphagous butterfly Vanessa cardui (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). Journal of Insect Behavior, 18(4), 695–706. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-005-6907-7
Mouritsen, H., & Frost, B. J. (2002). Virtual migration in tethered flying monarch butterflies reveals their orientation mechanisms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(15), 10162–10166. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.152137299
Robinson, G. S., Ackery, P. R., Kitching, I. J., Beccaloni, G. W., & Hernández, L. M. (2010). HOSTS — A database of the world's Lepidopteran hostplants. Natural History Museum, London. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/hostplants/
Scott, J. A. (1986). The butterflies of North America: A natural history and field guide. Stanford University Press.
Stefanescu, C., Alarcón, M., & Ávila, A. (2007). Migration of the painted lady butterfly Vanessa cardui to north-eastern Spain is aided by African wind currents. Journal of Animal Ecology, 76(5), 888–898. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2007.01262.x
Stefanescu, C., Páramo, F., Åkesson, S., Alarcón, M., Ávila, A., Brereton, T., Carnicer, J., Cassar, L. F., Fox, R., Heliölä, J., Hill, J. K., Hirneisen, N., Kjellén, N., Kühn, E., Kuussaari, M., Leinonen, R., Lindström, Å., Ljungberg, H., Maes, D., … Talavera, G. (2013). Multi-generational long-distance migration of insects: Studying the painted lady butterfly in the Western Palaearctic. Ecography, 36(4), 474–486. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2012.07738.x
Stefanescu, C., Hobson, K. A., Alarcón, M., & Janzen, T. (2016). Long-distance autumn migration across the Sahara by painted lady butterflies: Exploiting resource pulses in the tropical savannah. Biology Letters, 12(10), 20160561. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2016.0561
Talavera, G., Bataille, C., Benetello, F., Christie, D., Clegg, S., De Raedt, J., Elias, M., Feranec, R., Garcia-Berro, A., Gil-T., F., Hausmann, A., Janzen, T., Kaňuch, P., López-Mañas, R., Martínez-Abraín, A., Mateus, E., McLeod, A., Mendez, M., Mensah, P., … Vila, R. (2024). A trans-oceanic flight of over 4,200 km by painted lady butterflies. Nature Communications, 15, 5205. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49079-2
Talavera, G., García-Berro, A., Talla, V., Tang, Q., Snäll, N., Stefanescu, C., Larsen, T. B., Kreft, S., Toro-Delgado, E., Müller, C., Baltensperger, A., Rasplus, J.-Y., Molina-Venegas, R., Dapporto, L., Guerrero-Cánovas, C., & Vila, R. (2023). The Afrotropical breeding grounds of the Palearctic-African migratory painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui). PNAS, 120(14), e2218280120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2218280120
UK Butterflies. (n.d.). Painted Lady Vanessa cardui. Retrieved September 4, 2026, from https://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species.php?species=cardui
Wahlberg, N., Brower, A. V. Z., & Nylin, S. (2005). Phylogenetic relationships and historical biogeography of tribe Nymphalini (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 86(2), 227–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2005.00531.x
Westbrook, J. K. (2008). Noctuid migration in Texas within the nocturnal aeroecological boundary layer. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 48(1), 99–106. https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icn040
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