The silver-washed fritillary (Argynnis paphia) is a common and variable butterfly found over much of the Palearctic realm – Algeria, Europe and across the Palearctic to Japan.
The silver-washed fritillary butterfly is deep orange with black spots on the upperside of its wings, and has a wingspan of 54–70 mm, with the male being smaller and paler than the female. The underside is green (verdigris) with a metallic gloss and broad silver bands which are partly curved, hence the name silver-washed. In the male the forewings are rather pointed whereas in the female they are more rounded. On females of the minority valesina form, recurrent in most European populations, the ground color is not fawn but grey with greenish reflections. The caterpillar is black brown with two yellow lines along its back and long reddish-brown spines.
The male possesses scent scales on the upperside of the forewing that run along veins one to four as three distinct scent-streaks. The scent produced from these scales attracts females and helps to distinguish it from other species.
Adults feed on the nectar of bramble, thistles, and knapweeds, and also on aphid honeydew. The silver-washed is a strong flier, and more mobile than other fritillaries, and, as such, can be seen gliding above the tree canopy at high speed. Its preferred habitat is thin, sunny, deciduous woodland, especially oaks, but it has been known to live in coniferous woodland.
The main larval food plant of the species is the common dog violet (Viola riviniana).[1]
Unusually for a butterfly, the female does not lay her eggs on the leaves or stem of the caterpillar's food source (in this case violets), but instead one or two meters above the woodland floor in the crevices of tree bark close to clumps of violets.
When the egg hatches in August, the caterpillar immediately goes into hibernation until spring. Upon awakening, it will drop to the ground, and feeds on violets close to the base of the tree. The caterpillar usually feeds at night, and usually conceals itself during the day away from its food source, but during cool weather will bask in the sunny spots on the forest floor on dry, dead leaves. It will pupate amongst the ground vegetation, and the adults will emerge in June.
Seitz— The conical, ribbed, yellowish grey eggs are deposited on tree-trunks, particularly pines; the female commences about 4 or 5 ft. above the ground and with a few flappings of the wing flies higher up, depositing an egg at intervalls of 1/2 to 1 m, flying around the tree in a kind of spiral. When reaching a height of about 4 m it leaves the tree in order to begin again in the same way on another one. The larva lives from August until the end of May on Violaceae, hibernating very small (Gillmer) and beginning to feed already in March.It is blackish brown, with a broad yellow dorsal stripe divided by a thin black line, and with numerous yellow dots, spots and streaks on the sides; the spines long, yellow at the base, the two anterior ones curved and prolonged, resembling antennae. The pupa is usually fastened low down on a pine-trunk; it is greyish brown, with pointed processes on the head and sharp angles, and has conical pointed tubercles, which are at first silvery and become golden before the emergence of the butterfly. The species is on the wing in Europe from July till September, in Eastern Asia til October; it is very common everywhere and flies particularly on broad roads in the forest and at the edges of woods. The butterflies visit especially the flowers of brambles, scabious and thistles, on which they can easily be caught. When desirous to mate the male circles around the female, while the latter is flying with even flappings of the wings straight for a bush or a projecting branch. Here copulation takes place, the sexes being often so strongly united that they remain together for some time, frequently the one individual carrying the other about.
The silver-washed fritillary was in decline in the UK for much of the 1970s and 1980s, but seems to be coming back to many of its old territories.
Named in the Classical tradition.Aphrodite Paphia is a goddess who arose out of white foam on the waves/ Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty.