Icaricia icarioides evius

'Evius' Boisduval's Blue

Boisduval's blues in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains (and most other places to the south) are subspecies evius. Males are a beautiful pale blue with silvery veins and black borders, while females vary, with blue at the base often blending into tan coloration and with wide borders on the forewings and a row of small orange markings along the bottom of the hind wing. Both sexes may be found in patches of lupines, the larval food plant. There is one brood, flying from approximately mid-May into mid-July most years for higher elevation mountain colonies (earlier at lower elevations). Early instar larvae feed after the flights and then overwinter at the base of the plant, sometimes tended by ants in their burrows. Before flights the next spring, the larvae finish developing and pupate.

The naming of this butterfly is credited to Boisduval, who had received a few males from Pierre Lorquin, who had been in California during the gold rush (see the brief description below). In an article in the Systematics book (p.29), Emmel, Emmel and Mattoon restricted the type locality to La Cresenta in Los Angeles based on the likelihood that Lorquin collected his specimens there in the 1850s.