a good white butterfly!

Not all white caterpillars are baddies!

The large white (pieris brassicae) is the rascal who lays its eggs on members of the cabbage family and whose caterpillars decimate our calabrese and Brussels sprouts.

It has a smaller, less bold cousin, the green veined white (pieris napi) whose appetite is for crussifers and not brassicas. It may take a liking to wild carrot or to your coriander, but it won't bother your brassicas. So we can leave them alone and enjoy their looping flight through shaded areas looking for wild plants to lay their eggs on.

Here, a green veined white gorges itself on the sweet nectar of a buddleia bush.