Naturalist Spotlight: Alpine Butterflies
- IPWA
- Jul 28
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 30
By Rob Pudim
"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough." — Rabindranath Tagore
Here in the West, they flutter around water seeps on the trails. These seeps are called "ojos" in the old Spanish Norteno dialect from the 16th Century which means a seep or slow spring. Think of Ojito, Ojo Caliente, Ojo Seco or Ojo Felix.
Have you seen me on the trails?
Spring Azure Butterfly and Shasta Blue Butterfly
There are two butterflies in the Alpine Ecosystem that visitors are likely to see in the wilderness because of their stand-out blue color:
The Spring Azure Butterfly (Celestrina argeolus cinerea)...
...and the Shasta Blue Butterfly also known as Indian Lady (Plebejes shasta minnehaha).
The caterpillars of these Blue Butterflies feed on a wide variety of plants, shrubs and trees, but fancy the pea family. Mature caterpillars have a honey gland on the bottom of their 7th abdominal segment. Consequently, Honeypot Ants treat these caterpillars like humans treat cows, protecting them from predators and milking them.
Cinerea butterflies (Blue Azure) can be found fluttering around ojos on St Vrain Trail when there is still snow on the ground. The males are sky-blue and the females a muted blue. Minnehaha butterflies (Shasta Blue) are found higher in places like Arapaho Pass. They are smaller and less colorful.
Mead's Sulphur Butterfly
Meet the orange-yellow butterfly known as Mead's Sulphur (Colias meadii meadii).
It thrives above treeline in the Rocky Mountains, typically flying in July and August. You might see its lime-green underwings surveying the tundra and lower places like Crater Lakes.
Small Apollo Butterfly
The white butterfly with its black and red spots is the Small Apollo (Parnassius Phoebus), cousin of the swallowtails but with no common name.
The Apollo Sayi subspecies (Parnassius Phoebus Sayi) is the lower altitude bug and Apollo Hermodur subspecies (Parnassius phoebus hermodur) is the high guy who is dingy and smudged. The two of them feed on sedum (stonecrop plants) exclusively.
The males emerge about two weeks ahead of the females and start flying, looking for a mate. The females however, usually mate before flying. Once mated, the female can not mate again.
Tolland Fritillary Butterfly
Our final butterfly is the Tolland Silver-bordered Fritillary (Boloria myrina tollandensis), a subspecies native to the rocky mountains at high elevations (10,000 feet and above). It was first identified in the wet meadows around the Tolland school house in Gilpin County, so this is the typotypic locality for it. However it is rare in the Tolland area because the surrounding meadows were drained decades ago to increase stream flow. However, Tollandenisis can still be found around the Moffat Tunnel and on the eastern border of the James Peak Wilderness (JPW). It can also be found in wet meadows in high-elevation areas of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
Naturalist column exploring high country flora, fauna and geography
IPWA volunteers are often asked by visitors not just about the trails, but about what they are seeing in the Indian Peaks and James Peak Wilderness Areas. This column will cover some of the plants, animals and geographic features that hikers, anglers and backpackers may come across in these areas.
About Rob Pudim
A long time Boulder resident, Rob describes himself as “a coal-miner's son from Pennsylvania, a "fallen" scientist (Chemistry, Rutgers University and Microbiology, Tulane University) an editorial cartoonist, an amateur lepidopterist, a Native Plant Master, and a long-time birder”. His affiliation with IPWA goes back to its founding in the 1980s.
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