Medium-sized butterflies, yellow, orange, and sometimes white or greenish yellow with dark-bordered wings, the borders generally heaviest in the female. Eggs spindle-shaped, tapering at top and bottom, and attached to the surface where laid by a flat disk-like expansion; vertically and horizontally ribbed. Caterpillars elongated; head small; body generally green, striped longitudinally. They feed upon leguminous plants, and especially upon the various species of clover (Trifolium) and Astragalus, though some boreal species are known to feed upon the foliage of huckleberries ( Vaccinium) and willows.
The genus is large and is found on every continent except Australia. It is lacking in the very hot tropical regions of both the New and Old Worlds, but is found in Greenland and thence ranging south among the cordilleran uplifts to Patagonia. It is represented from Japan to Norway, and turns up at the Cape of Good Hope.
PL. CV
(1) Colias philodice Godart, [Plate CV], Fig. 1, ♂; Fig. 2, albino, ♀ (The Common Sulphur).
This is the common “Puddle-butterfly” or “Clover-butterfly” which every child has seen gathered in swarms about moist places, or hovering by the score or hundreds over the blossoming clover fields. There are many variations both in size and color. The females are frequently albinoes, that is to say they are white, rather than yellow. Now and then melanic males turn up, but they are rare. In these the wings are black, of the same color as the borders in normal specimens. Expanse 1.25-2.25 inches.
Ranges from Canada to Florida and westward to the Rocky Mountains.
PL. CVI
