Celastrina ladon

Spring azure
Male, Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park, Washington
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Lycaenidae
Genus:	Celastrina
Species:	C. ladon
Binomial name
Celastrina ladon (Cramer, 1780)
Subspecies[1]
C. l. lucia – Boreal spring azure C. l. nigrescens – Western spring azure

Celastrina ladon, the spring azure, is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family. It is found in North America from Alaska and Canada south of the tundra, through most of the United States except the Texas coast, southern plain and peninsula Florida; south in the mountains to Colombia.

Male, Ottawa, Ontario

Since the publication of a monograph on the Lycaenopsis Group of Lycaenid genera in 1983 by Eliot & Kawazoe,^[2] ladon has been considered by some taxonomic authorities to be a subspecies of Celastrina argiolus (Linnaeus, 1758). Other authorities still consider C. ladon and related species C. neglecta and C. serotina, to be "full" species.^{[3][4][5][6][7]}

Mer Bleue Conservation Area, Ottawa, Ontario

Similar species

• Summer azure (C. neglecta)
• Cherry gall azure (C. serotina)
• Holly azure (C. idella)

References

1. Entomology Collection, E.H. Strickland Entomological Museum
2. Eliot, J. N. and Kawazoe, A., 1983. Blue butterflies of the Lycaenopsis group: 1-309, 6 pls. London.
3. Cherry Gall Azure full species status, BugGuide.com
4. Spring Azure, Butterflies of Canada
5. Spring Azure, Butterflies and Moths of North America
6. Spring Azure, Encyclopedia of Life
7. Celastrina, funet.fi

External links