Iryna's Azure

Credit: I found this story in the vast complexity of the Mirror comments for this week. Neithan Hador found the headline and photo montage on X, posted by Matt Van Swol. I found the fun facts about the Celastrinas on INaturalist.

A newly recognized butterfly species--one of those little blue ones this web site may get to in another ten years or so--has been named in honor of Iryna Zarutska, Celastrina iryna. 

It's thought to be a hybrid species formed by natural crossbreeding between C. neglecta and C. ladon. It looks to the naked eye just like Celastrina neglecta and pretty much like most of the other Celastrinas, but has slight consistent differences under a microscope, such as the female's underwings being almost all white instead of brown or gray. 

Twitter montage by Matt Van Swol. 

C. ladon is the Spring Azure. C. neglecta is the Summer Azure. C. iryna is Iryna's Azure. They look similar enough that they were long thought to be variations or subspecies within one species, but they're currently regarded as separate species. Individuals can be sorted into one of the three species by examining their wings under a microscope; further dissection is not necessary. They are found all over North America and as far into South America as Colombia, wherever their food plants grow.

It's easy to find and photograph a Spring Azure like this one (male)--but it's not easy to photograph his upper wings, because these butterflies almost always hold their wings straight up over their backs, tightly together, when they're not flying. Photo from Wikipedia. 

Photo by Jlculler, taken in Maryland. 

They pollinate many flowers, including these blue flags as photographed by Smwhite in Ohio. They are significant pollinators for fruit trees and strawberries.

And they also compost brackish or polluted water, sometimes in crowds as photographed by Jack In The Pulpit in Missouri. They are often found at the same puddles with Tiger Swallowtails and Red-Spotted Purples. Like those bigger species, they are bold and may lick sweat or mud off your clothes or skin if you hold still. 

As caterpillars they're seldom noticed. The caterpillars eat parts of flowers that have been pollinated, possibly by the caterpillars' adult relatives, and so reduce flower litter without interfering with the plants' life cycle. Some think the Spring Azures' favorite food is dogwood flowers. Others note that they like variety in their diet. In Massachusetts alone they have been found eating

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dogwoods (Cornus), cherry (Prunus), shadbush (Amelanchier), blackberry (Rubus), meadowsweet (Spirea), viburnum (Viburnum, sumac (Rhus), blueberries (Vaccinium), maple (Acer), holly (Ilex), privet (Ligustrum), sarsaparilla (Aralia), bearberry (Arctostaphylos), colombine (Aquilegia), New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus), hops (Humulus), oak (Quercus), horse chestnut (Aesculus), honeysuckle (Lonicera), lupine (Lupinus), groundnut (Apios), hog peanut (Amphicarpa), bush clover (Lespedeza), sweet clover (Meliotis), horsebalm (Collinsonia), daisy (Chrysanthemum), and sunflower (Helianthus).

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According to the Massachusetts Audubon Society. They are small, green, and well camouflaged. 

Summer Azures tend to have a paler blue color on the upper wings, paler grey on the under wings, and (females only) a wider band of black on the edge of each fore wing.

Photo from Wikipedia.

Photo by Diohio1. At high magnification the caterpillar can be seen to have warts and hairs. In real life it's about the size of your cuticles and you're likely, even if you have one in your hand, to think it's a bit of broken flower stem. 

Summer Azures may have different tastes but they, too, pollinate (and eat) a variety of flowers, including fruit trees, and are an important part of our ecology. 

There are a few other distinct species of Celastrina whose looks and habits are also very similar, and Celastrina iryna is just another one of the group. People who see them will probably always call them all Spring Azures. Real Nature Nerds, however, recognize Summer Azures, Lucia''s Azures, Appalachian Azures, and more, and now Iryna's Azures.

Google doesn't venture a definition for Celastrina other than "the name of a genus of butterflies in the Lycaenid family, formerly classified as Lycaena spp.," but does note that--before Iryna Zarutska was murdered--the name Iryna was a variant spelling of eirene, the Greek word for peace, which was sometimes personified and worshipped as a goddess. This name was also given to daughters so, in due time, the early Christian Church listed several saints called Irene, which of course spread the name all over Europe and generated lots of variant forms in different languages. "Iryna" is a form often found in Poland and Ukraine.