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Melanargia arge

Italian Marbled White

Field Notes

Frosinone, Italy, May 2003

Frosinone, Italy, May 2003

Frosinone, Italy, May 2003

Confined to the southern half of Italy and eastern Sicily this is perhaps the most delicate looking Marbled White. It has relatively very little black on the upperside and almost none, except fine lines, on the underside. We found it near the north of its range, south east of Rome. It was very difficult to find and we only located a single colony. This was a grassy flowery and very steep limestone hillside. The dozen or so butterflies we found were sailing up and down this steep slope. It was far too steep to climb so we had to wait for the butterflies to venture to ground level where we could hope to photograph them.

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