(Photo: courtesy Brett Howton, Narangba, Queensland)

The caterpillars are green with white stripes, and yellow ends containing black spots. The head is black. They have a pair of short fleshy horns on the thorax.

(Photo: courtesy of David Johnston)

The pupa is white with black markings, formed in the larval shelter, and held by a cremaster and girdles.

(Photo: courtesy of Kath Vail, Middle Pocket, New South Wales)

The adult butterflies are dark brown on top with yellow and blue markings on the wings. Underneath, they are greenish with yellow and blue markings. In museum specimens, the blue markings fade away. The abdomen on top is banded in black and yellow, with a red tip. The undersides of the head and the abdomen are scarlet. The butterflies have a wingspan of about 5 cms.

(Photo: courtesy of Paul Kay)

This species is unique, in that it is the only butterfly species to have a frenulum : bristles at the base of the hindwings linking the fore and hind wings together for flying. The frenelum is missing in all other species of butterflies, but present in many species of moths.

(Photo: courtesy of Peter R. Samson,
Bureau of Sugar Experiment Station, Mackay)

The eggs of this species are spherical and ribbed. They are laid singly on a foodplant, normally on the underside of a leaf.

(Photo: courtesy of Kath Vail, Middle Pocket, NSW)

This species occurs only over sections of the north-east coast of Queensland and New South Wales as two subspecies :

( Australia Post, 1981)

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 1, pp 62-63.

Frank Jordan & Helen Schwencke,
Create More Butterflies : a guide to 48 butterflies and their host-plants
Earthling Enterprises, Brisbane, 2005, pp. 37, 65, 66.

William Sharp Macleay,
Annulosa,
in Philip Parker King :
Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia,
Volume 2 (1826), Appendix B, pp. 463-464, No. 162.

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(updated 14 March 2011, 24 October 2022)