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Acmon Blue
Icaricia acmon
Icaricia acmon, the Acmon blue, is a North American butterfly. It ranges mainly in California and Oregon but can also be seen in southwestern Canada and in the Great Plains Region of the United States, with a total range of about 2,500,000 square km. Because of the breadth of its range, it occurs in several different habitats, such as grasslands, fields, shrub lands, forests, and deserts. Acmon blue was discovered by Pierre Lorquin in 1850, while he visited California during the Gold Rush. It is believed that Acmon Blue was discovered in the San Francisco area.
Wingspan is between the range of 17-30 mm. The tops of the wings are blue with dark edges in males and brown in females. Its underside is white with black spots for both sexes and a red-orange band on the hindwing. Caterpillars are yellow with white hairs and a green stripe down the back. The Acmon is richly colored, more specifically the females with contrasting rows of red lunules (sometimes fused into a band). Meanwhile, the male's hindwing lunules tend to become pink and may disappear during autumn.
From the article Acmon blue on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
What it does
Adults: Feed on nectar Caterpillars: Feed on leaves, flowers, deerweed, buckwheats, lupines, trefoils, fruits of wild buckwheat, legumes such as trefoils, and milkvetches.
Wikipedia: “Diet”
Listen
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Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
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In the stacks
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Every page naming Icaricia acmon in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 520456.