Summer Azure, upperwing

Celastrina neglecta

Summer Azure · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 26 July 2026

A male Summer Azure with the wings spread flat to the sun in the July border, showing the powder blue of the upperside that is otherwise only a flash in flight. Azures are small butterflies of the woodland edges of the eastern United States, and a sunny garden bed in July is where the summer brood basks.

Small blues bask like this mainly to warm the flight muscles before feeding, not to be seen - courtship in this group runs largely on scent rather than on the colour that catches a human eye. The narrow dark edge to the forewing marks a male; a female carries a much broader dark border.