As soon as the sun warms in the spring, you can see butterflies fluttering over the grass. These are the most beautiful insects on Earth, there is a huge variety of their species. They are day and night, large and small, they differ in life expectancy and type of nutrition. The first appears in spring butterfly lemongrass. She is one of the few that can endure the winter.
There are butterflies nondescript and pale, and there are beauties such that they can not take their eyes off. They get their color, due to the location and different shades of the smallest scales with which their wings are covered. Because of this, they become slippery, which helps butterflies escape from enemies. And these beauties have a lot of the latter, not only birds like to feast on them.
Therefore, some butterflies have a protective color, for example, merging with the bark of a tree. Others are protected, on the contrary, with bright colors, colored spots that look like eyes. Such beauties are also at risk of being caught by man.
Butterflies of Russia are very beautiful and diverse: peacock eye, swallowtail, purpurea, mother of pearl, perennial, admiral - these names were given to them in connection with the peculiarities of the color and structure of the wings. Some got their name from what their caterpillars feed on: hives, cabbage, raspberry, and plum tails.
In general, butterflies, like all insects, benefit from pollinating plants,
are food for birds and even help fight weeds.
But many lay their eggs on cultivated plants, and hatched caterpillars cause great damage to agriculture. These include butterfly cabbage. By itself, it does no harm, since it eats nectar, but its larvae live on cabbage and are able to turn a head of cabbage into a lace skeleton.
One of the most common is the lemongrass butterfly. It belongs to the family of whites. True, males are yellow-green in color, and females are white with a greenish tint. They have a special shape of the wings, always one orange spot on each. Due to its special structure, the insect almost merges with plants.
Butterfly lemongrass lays eggs one at a time on leaves of joster or buckthorn. Their larvae can eat only these plants. Therefore, this butterfly is also called buckthorn. She herself eats nectar and carries pollen, pollinating plants. Of course, she also needs water. Butterflies drink dew or suck moisture from the ground. To do this, they have long proboscis.
Their caterpillars are inconspicuous, green, they hide well from enemies. After hatching from the chrysalis, the lemongrass butterfly butterfly eats nectar for the rest of the summer and stores its strength for wintering. In order to winter, she is looking for an evergreen shrub, usually this is old ivy. Over the summer, only one generation of these insects hatch.
Since ancient times, people have been attracted by the beauty of butterflies. The ancient Greeks called them animated flowers. People have always collected collections, pinning these beauties with pins to album sheets. But lately, live butterflies have been popular. Exhibitions are organized at which people admire not only their beauty, but also their flight.
