The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Cabbage Butterfly

(Pieris rapae), also small white, a butterfly of the family Pieridae. The wingspread is 4–5 cm. Cabbage butterflies are predominantly white; the front wings are black at the top and have one (males) or two (females) blackish spots. The butterflies are found in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North America. The caterpillar is dull green, with a yellow stripe down the back and yellow spots on the sides. It lives on plants of the families Cruciferae, Resedaceae, and Tropaeolaceae. The caterpillar damages garden and ornamental plants (for example, cabbage, turnip, and mignonette).

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References in periodicals archive

Relative to day-length, temperature appeared to be more important in determining diapause of the cabbage butterfly. The goodness-of-fit obtained by using the generalized additive model is satisfactory with [r.sup.2] = 0.95.

Logistic regression is a better method of analysis than linear regression of arcsine square root transformed proportional diapause data of pieris melete (Lepidoptera: Pieridae)

In one behavioral experiment, his team confined a predator, an ant species from the Northeast, with a European cabbage butterfly caterpillar or a mealworm of similar size.

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The white cabbage butterfly is perhaps the most destructive.

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Plant influencing behavior of large white cabbage butterfly, Pieris brassicae (L.).

Host plants alter the reproductive behavior of Pieris brassicae (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) and its solitary larval endo-parasitoid, Hyposoter ebeninus (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) in a cruciferous ecosystem

Among those insects, look for the mourning cloaks and the polygonias; the cabbage butterfly is the most common spring butterfly, and its appearance parallels the blooming of the first major wave of Early and Middle Spring wildflowers.

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A few boys may have dusted the cabbages with ashes or slaked lime to discourage the cabbage butterfly, but no attempt was made to control the coddling moth.

We're pretty good when we look ourselves over: Read this survey of farm progress and see another day comes to farming