Bug FAQAustralian Painted Lady
Vanessa kershawi · Order: Lepidoptera · Family: Nymphalidae
The Australian painted lady is a small butterfly, usually no larger than 5 cm across, with brown bases on the wings that turn brick-red and are broken by black bands. It lives across southern Australia, especially in urban areas and on invasive carduine thistles in New South Wales, and adults feed on flower nectar. Its life cycle lasts about 53 days in summer, with green eggs hatching in three days and a two-week pupal stage hanging under a leaf.
Source: Wikipedia
How to recognize it
The wing bases are brown, turning to a brick-red colour broken by black bands.
Source: Wikipedia
Size
It is smaller than the common painted lady, rarely exceeding 5 cm (2 inches) across the wings.
Source: Wikipedia
Where it lives
It uses invasive carduine thistles as host plants in New South Wales. Within its range it is also found in urban areas.
Source: Wikipedia
What it eats
Adults feed on nectar from flowers. If leaves are insufficient they also eat flowers.
Source: Wikipedia
Life cycle
The complete life cycle lasts about 53 days in summer. Eggs are green and hatch in roughly three days.
Source: Wikipedia
When you see it
In spring, adults migrate south in large numbers from Queensland and New South Wales.
Source: Wikipedia
Where it comes from
The species is mostly confined to Australia. In Australia it is common throughout southern regions below the Tropic of Capricorn.
Source: Wikipedia
Lookalikes
It looks very similar to the painted lady (Vanessa cardui). Some experts consider it a subspecies of the painted lady because of their similar lifestyle and behaviour.
Source: Wikipedia
More photos
Same family (Nymphalidae)
Sources
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_painted_lady
Look it up elsewhere: GBIF · iNaturalist · BugGuide · Wikipedia
Text written 2026-10-24 from the sources above and checked sentence by sentence against them. Data fetched 2026-10-22.