Colotis ione
The Common , or Bushveld, Purple Tip is another one of our South African butterflies where the males and females look so different that it would be very easy to confuse them for entirely different species – even within each of the sexes there’s a great variation of colour combinations that become more or less pronounced in the dry or wet season, making for a very tricky identification indeed! With a wingspan of around 5cm the Common Purple Tip is one of the larger species of the “tips” butterflies (genus Colotis).
These striking butterflies are on the wing throughout the year and, being a savanna species, in South Africa occur from the southern reaches of Kwazulu-Natal into the Lowveld and Bushveld regions of Mpumalanga, Limpopo and North West Province. They’re also widely distributed through the savanna areas of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. The larvae feed on the leaves of plants from the Boscia, Maerua and Capparis genuses.
DeWetsWild 
I absolutely love the purple tips. Gorgeous!
Always brightens my day when I see these beauties!
Good golly – some difference in colouration … but hey, purple and orange may well be my favourite colour combination ever… so, here’s to the drab white butterflies!! 😁😁😁
It can get very tricky for the colour blind among us. Like me!
Such pretty creatures, but rather confusing that the female didn’t get her makeup quite right. 😃
She’s not a fan of couples dressing to match!
😀
Beautiful captures. I more often see butterflies with orange or yellow tips, not the purple (although not in our garden) – but I had no idea that female purple tips have orange tips! You were fortunate to see mating pairs to help confirm the ID of the female.
Seeing them mate really was a most fortunate boon, else I was more than likely to misidentify the females for another “tip” species. Saying that, I might have to go through my posts about the orange tips again and just make doubly sure about those photos…
The complexity of butterflies!
I think I may have mentioned before but these are stunning! What a treat.
Thank you so very much!
Ek dink jy sal ‘n paar tips kan gee hoe om die common purple af te neem.
Skerp Abrie – baie dankie! In alle eerlikheid is dit 99.9% geluk.
These Purple Tips are unusually beautiful, and you have captured stunning images of them.
Very kind of you, thank you, Hien
So the female purple tip looks like an orange tip at a glance – nature playing tricks on us all!
The “Tip” butterflies can be a really tricky family for identification, Anne – I am really glad that in the case with most of these photos we actually saw them mating just before or after and could differentiate the female Purple Tips from their doppelgangers in that way.
That little bit of color adds so much. 🙂
janet
Less is more! 😀
The Lord God made them all.
A hymn I often catch myself humming when we’re outdoors, Beth.
They are very pretty butterflies!
What would the world have been without butterflies!?
I agree!