Don’t eat me, I’m too spicy!

This name describes both the small white Pieris rapae and the large white Pieris brassicacea, both associated with the cabbages and related plants their caterpillars feed on. The small white is among the top 3 butterflies spotted in London.

It lays single eggs on lots of leaves, and the caterpillars are green to make them hard to spot by predators. If they are found, they release “defensive vomit” – a sulfurous liquid that tastes and smells terrible, to ward off and deter whatever was thinking of eating them…

Large whites are more gregarious, with eggs laid in clusters so that large numbers of their more conspicuous caterpillars can quickly reduce their host plants to spiky skeletons. They too concentrate mustard-flavored sulfurous compounds in order to make themselves unpalatable, bordering on toxic. But in contrast to the green color disguise of small whites, their distinctive black, white, and yellow patterning is a form of warning sign known as aposematism.