![]() | Pencilled Blue (previously known as Candalides absimilis) POLYOMMATINI, POLYOMMATINAE, LYCAENIDAE, PAPILIONOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
This Caterpillar is green with a dark dorsal line and diagonal white marks along the sides. The head is brown. It feeds on the buds and young shoots of a variety of Australian native plants including :
as well as the introduced :
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.
The male adults are grey-blue on top.
The females are brown on top with a large white patch on each wing, and a purple sheen near the hinges.
Underneath, they both are white with rows of fawn carets. The butterflies have a wing span of about 3 cms.
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
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.
![]() caterpillar | ![]() butterflies | ![]() Lepidoptera | ![]() moths | ![]() caterpillar |
(updated 30 October 2013, 12 March 2015, 1 August 2020, 2 March 2021)