- Animals
- ›Arthropods
- ›Hexapods
- ›Insects
- ›Winged and Once-winged Insects
- ›Butterflies and Moths
- ›Butterflies
- ›Gossamer-winged Butterflies
- ›Blues
- ›Typical Blues
- ›Polyommatina
- ›Icaricia

Lupine Blue
Icaricia lupini
Icaricia lupini, the lupine blue, is a species of butterfly in the subfamily Polyommatinae of the family Lycaenidae. It is found from south-western Canada, south through much of mountainous and intermountain western United States and high plains to northern Mexico.
From the article Icaricia lupini on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
What it does
The eggs are laid on or near the flowers of their host plants, which the larvae proceed to eat the fruits, flowers, seeds, and leaves of; despite their common name, their host plants are buckwheat species in the genus Eriogonum, such as Eriogonum umbellatum and Eriogonum fasciculatum. They survive winter by undergoing hibernal diapause in the L2 instar. Adults feed on the flower nectar of several genera, including their buckwheat hosts, composites, and onions. Across most of its range, there are several generations of adults from March to July. Adults are on wing in one generation from June to August in the Sierra Nevada of eastern California, June to July on the Canadian Prairies, May to August in British Columbia, May to September in Colorado, and from May to August in Washington and Oregon.
Wikipedia: “Life history & ecology”
Listen
Looking for field recordings…
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Icaricia lupini 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 117360.