Pearl Crescent
Phyciodes tharos · Butterflies
Pearl Crescent
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 24 August 2025
A Pearl Crescent in the August border at the Botanic Garden, one of the most common small butterflies in the East, on the wing from spring to autumn across several overlapping generations. It lives in meadows, roadsides and gardens across the eastern United States, and the caterpillars feed on asters, which is why it is never far from a garden.
The name comes from a small pearly crescent on the underside of the hindwing, usually the most reliable way to separate it from the very similar Northern Crescent where their ranges overlap.
Pearl Crescent on marigolds
Finger Lakes, 30 August 2020
A Pearl Crescent on African marigolds in a Finger Lakes garden, a small, common butterfly of meadows and gardens across the eastern United States on a very showy flower. It runs several broods a year and is among the most frequently seen butterflies in an ordinary garden, precisely because it is so unfussy about what it visits.
The marigolds are bred for size and doubling, in a colour bordering on fluorescent, and the crescent barely registers against them, which is rather the point of the pairing.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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