Cool Critters: Meet the Julia orangetip, our region’s ‘new favorite spring girl’
Be on the lookout for the Julia orangetip butterfly, as its springtime presence in the Inland Northwest is brief. Elegant yet whimsical, it brings to mind a woodlands fairy flitting around Hobbiton in the Shire.
Unlike most butterflies drawn to the consistent warmth and thriving pollinating plants of summer, the Julia orangetip typically emerges not long after the crocuses bloom.
“Bright, cheerful harbingers of spring,” is how butterfly expert David James of Washington State University describes them. In the lowlands of Eastern Washington, look for them near streams, in meadows, forest edges and hedgerows through early June, he said.
A medium-sized butterfly that rapidly pulses its wings, the Julia orangetip is hard to miss. Most conspicuous are the bright orange tips on its pearly-white forewings, after which the insect is named.
In contrast, when the butterflies are at rest, their wings’ undersides display a shimmering, marbled pattern of yellows and greens and yellow veining. This helps them blend in with the wild mustard plants they feed on and also where the females lay their eggs, according to the North American Butterfly Association.
Julia used to be known as Sara. If you’re knowledgeable about our region’s butterflies, you may know that this enchanting butterfly was called the Sara orangetip (Anthocharis sara). But that changed in 2018, when a scientific discovery revealed that orangetips inhabiting the Pacific Northwest are a separate species from A. sara.
Never mind that the two appear nearly identical. A paper published in the journal Insecta Mundi concluded that Sara’s geographic range extended through California and only as far north as the southwest tip of Oregon – and what we in the Pacific Northwest had long called Sara orangetips were actually Julia orangetips (Anthocharis julia).
Mitochondrial sequencing showed that they were separate species, according to the paper, as did differences in larval and pupal characteristics.
Shortly after the announcement, James wrote an article about it in the newsletter of the Washington Butterfly Association, of which he is a board member.
“Our beloved Sara’s orangetip is sadly no more in Washington,” he said. “We have a new girl in town and her name is Julia.”
But don’t mourn as if an old friend has flitted away, James added. Celebrate because a new one has flown into town.
“Yes, Julia’s Orangetip will be what we shout when we spot the familiar orange-tipped white,” James wrote. “It will take some getting used to I know but give it a few years and Sara will be a distant memory and Julia will be our new favorite spring girl.”