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Family: Pieridae Flight Time: June-August and Spring after hibernation. Size: 52-60mm Altitude: 0-2500m |
| Often the first Butterfly to be seen after the
winter. Its bright yellow colour has given rise that it could have given
rise to the word butterfly, i.e. derived from butter(-coloured) fly.
Alternatively "u" was "you", anything else like a
short u (uh) was oe with umlauts... The word butterfly said in old english
would have been byout-erfly, e.g. beaut-er fly, beautiful fly. Make more
sense? The female, pictured above is paler, but still
with the leaf shaped wing. In Europe there are two other species, the cleopatra, Gonepteryx cleopatra with its orange colouration and the Powdered brimstone, Gonepteryx farinosa with two colour wings. |
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