Oreixenica orichora

Oreixenica orichora (Meyrick, 1885)
Spotted Alpine Xenica
(previously known as Xenica orichora)
SATYRINAE, NYMPHALIDAE, PAPILIONOIDEA

Don Herbison-Evans
(donherbisonevans@yahoo.com)
and
Stella Crossley

Oreixenica orichora
(Photo: courtesy of CSIRO/BIO Photography Group, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph)

These Caterpillars are initially green with a hairy brown head. Later instars are green with indistinct dark longitudinal lines and white dots. The caterpillars have a green head and a forked tail. The caterpillars feed on various species of Grass (POACEAE), including :

Horny snow grass ( Poa fawcettiae ), and

Soft Snow Grass ( Poa hiemata ).

The pupa is mottled brown, and is formed upright in the soil surface debris. It has a projection on each side of the head.

The wings of the adult butterflies are brown on top with yellow patches, and each wing also has an eyespot.

underside
(Photo: courtesy of Museums Victoria)

Underneath, the wings are similar but paler, and the hindwings each have two eyespots. The butterflies have a wing span of about 3 cms.

egg, magnified
(Photo: courtesy of Ken Walker, Blue Mountains, New South Wales)

The eggs are laid while the female is flying over a clump of a foodplant. The eggs are pale green and spherical, with a diameter of about 1mm. They are covered by about 50 columns of about 100 microsopic dimples.

The species is found as two sub-species:

orichora in the mountains of
New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, and Victoria,
and

paludosa (Lucas, 1892) in the mountains of
Tasmania.

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 492-493.

Edward Meyrick,
An ascent of Mount Kosciusko,
Entomologist's Monthly Magazine,
Volume 22 (1885), p. 82.