Orange tip butterfly

The warm weather lately has brought out a great many butterflies, at least in southern England. It's still very early for butterflies and there are only half-a-dozen species flying at the moment.

One species on the wing is the orange tip anthocharis cardomines They look like cabbage whites, only with bright orange corners on their wings. I've seen several, but they never seem to stop to feed. I think the reason they are so driven is that they are looking for one of these - a female - to mate with.

The females from above lack the orange tips and look basically like ordinary cabbage whites. But when they settle you can see this strange pattern on the undersides of the wings. Males have this too - presumably camouflage so that they can disappear in the vegetation.

This is the best I could do of male and female together.

Every butterfly has certain types of food-plants on which it lays its eggs, so that the caterpillar can eat that plant. For orange tip the commonest food-plants are lady's smock and hedge garlic ('jack-by-the-hedge'), which looks like this.