Leptosia nina

Description

• Unpublished manuscript of Lionel de Nicéville gives it the common name of "wandering snowflake"
• Upperside: white; base of wings very slightly powdered with minute black scales. Forewing: costa speckled obscurely with black; apex black, the inner margin of this inwardly angulate; a very large somewhat pear-shaped post-discal spot also black. Hindwing white, uniform; in most specimens an obscure, extremely slender, terminal black line.
• Underside: white; costal margin and apex of forewing broadly, and the whole surface of the hindwing irrorated with transverse, very slender, greenish strigae and minute dots; these on the hindwing have a tendency to form sub-basal, medial and discal obliquely transverse obscure bands; forewing: the postdiscal black spot as on the upperside; terminal margins of both forewings and hindwings with minute black, short, transverse slender lines at the apices of the veins, that have a tendency to coalesce and form a terminal continuous line as on the upperside. Antennae dark brown spotted with white, head slightly brownish, thorax and abdomen white. Female: similar, the black markings on the upperside of the forewing on the whole slightly broader, but not invariably so.
• Wingspan: 25–53 mm
• Habitat: The lower ranges of the Himalayas from Mussoorie to Sikkim; Central, Western and Southern India, but not in the desert tracts; Sri Lanka; Assam; Burma and Tenasserim; extending to China and the Malayan region.
• Larva: Green with a pale glaucous tinge about the bases of the legs and slightly hairy. Feeds on capers. Capparis zeylanica has been noted as a food plant.
• Pupa: Sometimes green, but more often of a delicate pink shade. Both the larva and pupa are very like those of Terias hecabe, but more delicately formed.

  Subspecies

• L. n. aebutia Fruhstorfer, 1910
• L. n. chlorographa Hübner,
• L. n. comma Fruhstorfer, 1903
• L. n. dione
• L. n. fumigata Fruhstorfer, 1903
• L. n. georgi Fruhstorfer
• L. n. malayana Fruhstorfer, 1910
• L. n. nicobarica
• L. n. nina
• L. n. niobe
• L. n. terentia Fruhstorfer

  Gallery