Cabbage White
Pieris rapae · Butterflies
Cabbage White
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 12 July 2026
A male Cabbage White in flight over mountain mint at the Botanic Garden, the proboscis still coiled. Introduced to North America near Quebec in the 1860s and now one of the commonest butterflies on the continent, which is a polite way of saying it is the butterfly whose caterpillars eat your brassicas.
One black spot on the forewing makes this a male; females carry two. The flight looks erratic and fluttery, but it is doing something specific: a searching pattern, quartering low over vegetation, and the same species has been shown to see ultraviolet marks on the females that we cannot.
Cabbage White, male
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 12 July 2026
A male Cabbage White on mountain mint in the July border, one of the commonest butterflies on the continent and a European import. Introduced to North America near Quebec in the 1860s, it spread across the whole continent within a few decades on the strength of the cabbage family.
One black spot on the forewing rather than two, which makes this a male; females carry a second spot lower down. Its caterpillars will eat almost anything in the cabbage family, garden brassicas included, which is why every allotment holder in two continents knows it.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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