as well as the introduced :

pupa
(Photo: courtesy of Todd Burrows, Paradise Point, Queensland)

The pupa is brown and has a length of about 1.5 cms. It is usually attached by the abdominal tip and a girdle to the food plant.

male
(Photo: courtesy of CSIRO/BIO Photography Group, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph)

The male adults are grey-blue on top.

female
(Photo: courtesy of Jenny Whiting, Pennant Hills, New South Wales)

The females are brown on top with a large white patch on each wing, and a purple sheen near the hinges.

female underside
(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

Underneath, they both are white with rows of fawn carets. The butterflies have a wing span of about 3 cms.

egg, magnified
(Photo: courtesy of Ken Walker, Kyogle, New South Wales)

The eggs are pastel shaded squashed spheres, with white polygonal ribs. The eggs have a diameter of about 0.8 mm. They are laid singly on a leaf or stem of a foodplant.

The species occurs along most of the east coast of Australia as the subspecies eastwoodi (Braby, 2008) and edwardsi (Braby, 2008) in

(Photo: courtesy of the Bruce Anstee)

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 758-760.

Baron Cajetan von Felder,
Verzeichniss der von den Naturforschern der Fregatte Novara gesammelten Macropepidoteren,
Verhandlungen Zoologisch-Botanischen Gesellschaft in Wien,
Volume 12, Part 1 (1862), p. 490, No. 168.

Frank Jordan & Helen Schwencke,
Create More Butterflies : a guide to 48 butterflies and their host-plants
Earthling Enterprises, Brisbane, 2005, pp. 15, 56, 59, 64.

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(updated 30 October 2013, 23 December 2023)