Spring Treetop Flasher

Pyractomena borealis · Order: Coleoptera · Family: Lampyridae

Also called: Spring Tree-Top Flasher, Northern Firefly

No source yet on danger. We have no source yet on whether it bites, stings or damages anything.
Spring Treetop Flasher
Photo: Nick Tobler (Cowturtle), CC BY

The Spring tree-top flasher is a firefly species in the Lampyridae family. It lives across a broad part of North America, from Alberta eastward to the Maritime provinces and throughout the U.S. states east of the Mississippi River.

Source: Wikipedia

How to recognize it

Pyractomena borealis is a firefly belonging to the beetle family Lampyridae.

Source: Wikipedia

Where it comes from

Its distribution covers much of eastern Canada and the eastern United States.

Source: Wikipedia

Where it is found in the US

Recorded in 36 of 51 states and DC. Most records: North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Maryland, South Carolina.

Darker = more records. Counts are museum and citizen-science records, not population size.

Source: GBIF

Status: native in North America; native in Canada. Source: iNaturalist

Months it is reported in the US

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Source: GBIF

More photos

Spring Treetop Flasher photo 2
Photo: Will Kuhn, CC BY
Spring Treetop Flasher photo 3
Photo: iNaturalist user, CC0
Spring Treetop Flasher photo 4
Photo: Will Kuhn, CC BY
Spring Treetop Flasher photo 5
Photo: Katja Schulz, CC BY

Same family (Lampyridae)

Common Eastern FireflyCommon Eastern FireflyPhotinus pyralisWinter FireflyWinter FireflyPhotinus corruscusNuisance, not dangerousBlack FireflyBlack FireflyLucidota atraEuropean Glow-wormEuropean Glow-wormLampyris noctilucaDark FireflyDark FireflyPyropyga nigricans

Sources

  • Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyractomena_borealis

Look it up elsewhere: GBIF · iNaturalist · BugGuide · ITIS · Wikipedia

Text written 2026-10-23 from the sources above and checked sentence by sentence against them. Data fetched 2026-10-23.

How this page works

This is one bug's fact sheet. The colored box at the top says whether it is dangerous. Sections below cover how to recognize it, whether it is a pest, and how to deal with it. The US map shows which states have records; tap a state to see other bugs there.

Every fact on Bug FAQ comes from a named source (university extension sites, government agencies, GBIF, iNaturalist, Wikipedia). The source is linked next to each section. If we have no source for something, we leave it out.