46 Types of Butterflies in France: From Swallowtails to Purple Emperors

France holds more butterfly diversity than almost any other country in Western Europe, with alpine meadows, Mediterranean scrubland, and river valleys all supporting their own distinct communities of species. Metropolitan France, including Corsica, has 253 recorded butterfly species, of which 16 are threatened with extinction and 18 more are considered almost threatened. That kind of range means a walk through the Cévennes looks nothing like an afternoon in the Pyrenees or along the Atlantic coast.

This guide works through 46 types of butterflies in France that cover every major family found in the country, from the large, tailed swallowtails to the small coppers and hairstreaks that most people walk past without noticing. Each entry includes the identifying features, typical habitat, and flight period that make the species easier to recognize on sight.

• Lowland meadows and roadside verges for whites, blues, and browns
• Oak and beech woodland edges for admirals, emperors, and hairstreaks
• Limestone and chalk grassland for fritillaries and ringlets
• Alpine and subalpine slopes above 1,500 meters for Apollos and Erebia species
• Mediterranean scrub and garrigue for festoons and southern specialists

Pro Tip: Most French butterfly species are easiest to find between May and August, when flight periods overlap and warm, sunny mornings bring them out to nectar and bask.

1. Swallowtail

The swallowtail (Papilio machaon) is one of the largest and most recognizable butterflies in France, with a wingspan that can reach 9 centimeters. It is a large, striking butterfly with yellow wings and black markings, known for its elegant flight, and the tails on its hindwings make it hard to confuse with anything else on the wing.

It favors open grassland, gardens, and chalk downland where its caterpillar host plants, fennel and other umbellifers, grow in sun. Readers comparing it to American species will notice a family resemblance to the Eastern tiger swallowtail covered in this guide to butterflies found in North Carolina, though the two are not closely related.

2. Scarce Swallowtail

The scarce swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius) is paler than the swallowtail, with cream-colored wings crossed by narrow black stripes rather than bold blotches. Only 14 swallowtail-family species occur across the whole of Europe, and France hosts a good share of them, including this species in orchards, scrubland, and warm hillsides across the south and center of the country.

Its name is misleading in France, where it is actually fairly common in blackthorn and hawthorn hedgerows. The long, slender tails and gliding flight style set it apart from the true swallowtail even at a distance.

3. Southern Festoon

The southern festoon (Zerynthia polyxena) is a small, patterned member of the swallowtail family with scalloped wing edges and a mosaic of yellow, black, and red markings. It flies in a single generation each spring, usually from March through May, and depends entirely on birthwort as a caterpillar food plant.

Look for it in warm, dry habitats across southern and central France, particularly near riverbanks and abandoned vineyards where birthwort tends to colonize disturbed ground. Its slow, fluttering flight makes it one of the easier swallowtail relatives to photograph.

4. Spanish Festoon

The Spanish festoon (Zerynthia rumina) looks similar to its southern cousin but carries more red in its pattern and tends to fly slightly earlier in the season. It occurs mainly in the Mediterranean south of France, especially around Languedoc and the Pyrenees foothills.

Like the southern festoon, it relies on birthwort species for its caterpillars, which means its range tracks the distribution of that plant closely. Populations can be locally dense in good years but patchy overall, so timing a visit to early spring improves the odds of a sighting.

5. Apollo

The Apollo (Parnassius apollo) is a large, white, semi-transparent butterfly marked with black spots and striking red eyespots on the hindwings. It lives almost exclusively above 1,000 meters in the Alps, Pyrenees, and Massif Central, where its caterpillars feed on stonecrop.

A closely related species, the small Apollo, is only slightly smaller and very similar in appearance, which can make field identification tricky without a close look at wing pattern details. Anyone used to spotting mountain butterflies in Colorado’s high-altitude species will recognize the same pattern of alpine specialists restricted to thin air and short summers.

6. Clouded Apollo

The clouded apollo (Parnassius mnemosyne) lacks the red eyespots of the true Apollo and instead shows a cleaner, mostly white and black wing pattern with translucent patches near the wingtips. It prefers damp mountain meadows and forest clearings rather than the bare rock favored by its relative.

This species has declined across much of its French range as hay meadows have been converted to intensive pasture, making it a conservation priority in several regional parks. Spring flight timing, usually May into July depending on elevation, is the best window to search for it.

7. Cleopatra

The Cleopatra (Gonepteryx cleopatra) is a southern specialist closely related to the brimstone, with males showing a vivid orange patch on the forewing that females lack entirely. It favors Mediterranean scrub, buckthorn thickets, and garrigue habitat across the south of France.

Adults overwinter as fully formed butterflies, tucked into evergreen foliage where their leaf-shaped wings provide near-perfect camouflage. This means Cleopatras can appear on warm winter days well before most other species have emerged.

8. Brimstone

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The brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) is a pale sulphur-yellow butterfly in males, while females are a much paler, almost white-green shade that can cause confusion with whites at a glance. It is one of the longest-lived adult butterflies in France, surviving up to a year through hibernation.

It occurs almost everywhere buckthorn grows, from hedgerows to woodland edges across the entire country. Some lepidopterists consider the brimstone’s leaf-mimicking wing shape the origin of the word “butterfly” itself, since early sightings often came from butter-colored males in spring.

9. Large White

The large white (Pieris brassicae) is a common white butterfly with black wingtips, often considered a garden pest because its caterpillars feed heavily on cabbage and other brassica crops. It produces two or three generations a year and can be found almost anywhere in France with open ground and flowering plants.

Large numbers sometimes migrate north from southern Europe in summer, which can cause local population spikes far from where the butterflies originally hatched. Gardeners dealing with cabbage damage in the United States see a similar pattern with the related species covered in this roundup of butterflies common to Ohio.

10. Small White

The small white (Pieris rapae) looks like a scaled-down version of the large white, with smaller, less pronounced black wingtip markings and a more delicate flight. It thrives in gardens, farmland, and urban green spaces throughout France.

Because it overlaps so heavily with the large white in both range and appearance, the two are frequently confused by casual observers. Checking wing size and the extent of the black tip markings is usually enough to tell them apart in the field.

11. Bath White

The Bath white (Pontia daplidice) has a mottled green-and-white checkered pattern on the underside of its hindwings, which sets it apart from the plainer large and small whites. It favors dry, open habitats including roadsides, fallow fields, and coastal dunes, mostly in the southern half of France.

Its numbers fluctuate significantly from year to year depending on migration from North Africa and Spain, so some seasons bring noticeably more sightings than others. Multiple generations fly between spring and autumn wherever its mustard-family host plants are available.

12. Black-veined White

The black-veined white (Aporia crataegi) is immediately recognizable by the dark veins running through its otherwise translucent white wings, a pattern unlike any other white species in France. Caterpillars feed communally on hawthorn and blackthorn, overwintering in silk nests before completing development the following spring.

This species has disappeared from parts of Britain but remains locally common in France, particularly in the south and in orchard country. Birds and other predators generally avoid it because of toxins its caterpillars accumulate from host-plant chemicals, a defense strategy covered more broadly in this guide to animals that eat butterflies.

13. Orange Tip

The orange tip butterfly is the first species to appear in early spring after spending winter as a pupa, and only males show the bright orange wingtips that give the species its name. Females are plain white with gray-green mottling on the underside, which sometimes leads to misidentification as a small white.

It prefers damp meadows, woodland edges, and hedgerows where cuckooflower and garlic mustard grow, since caterpillars feed almost exclusively on these plants. A single generation flies each year, usually finished by early summer across most of France.

14. Provence Orange Tip

The Provence orange tip (Anthocharis euphenoides) replaces the common orange tip in the warmer, drier habitats of southern France, and both sexes show yellow forewings with orange tips rather than the white-and-orange pattern of its northern relative. It flies earlier in the year, often starting in February in the mildest parts of its range.

Rockrose and related plants serve as its main caterpillar host, tying its distribution closely to Mediterranean scrubland and limestone hillsides. Outside France, its range barely extends beyond Spain and parts of northwest Italy, making it a genuinely regional specialty.

15. Clouded Yellow

The clouded yellow is a migratory butterfly with bright yellow wings, often seen in fields and meadows across France, though it cannot survive French winters and must recolonize from North Africa each year. Numbers vary enormously from season to season depending on how successful that annual migration turns out to be.

Clover and lucerne fields attract large numbers during good years, and the butterflies’ constant nectaring supports the kind of plant-pollinator relationship explored further in this breakdown of mutualism between animal species. A pale form of the female, long mistaken for a separate species, adds another identification wrinkle for newcomers.

16. Berger’s Clouded Yellow

Berger’s clouded yellow (Colias alfacariensis) looks almost identical to the common clouded yellow but can be separated with practice by its slightly paler ground color and different caterpillar host plant preference, favoring horseshoe vetch over clover. It occurs on chalk and limestone grassland across much of France.

Unlike the migratory clouded yellow, this species is a permanent resident that overwinters locally as a caterpillar. Two generations typically fly each year, with the first appearing in May and a second in late summer.

17. Peacock

The peacock is another common butterfly found throughout France, instantly identifiable by the four large, iridescent eyespots on its wings that startle predators into hesitating long enough for the butterfly to escape. It is one of the species most likely to turn up in a garden, since nettles, its main caterpillar food, grow almost everywhere.

Adults hibernate over winter in sheds, hollow trees, and other sheltered spots, sometimes waking on unseasonably warm days before settling back down. This makes the peacock one of the few species that can occasionally be seen in every month of the year.

18. Red Admiral

The red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) has dark brown-black wings crossed with bold red-orange bands and white spots near the tips, making it one of the most striking and easily identified species in France. It migrates north from the Mediterranean each spring and can be found almost anywhere, from mountain tops to coastal gardens.

Fermenting fruit and ivy flowers attract adults in autumn, when red admirals often gather in surprising numbers before colder weather sets in. Its migratory habits echo patterns seen in species covered in this guide to migratory butterflies found in Florida, where similar long-distance travelers pass through seasonally.

19. Painted Lady

The painted lady (Vanessa cardui) is one of the world’s most widely distributed butterflies, with an orange, black, and white pattern that looks similar across continents. It completes an extraordinary multi-generational migration each year, moving from Africa through Europe and sometimes as far as Scandinavia before the cycle reverses.

In exceptional years, mass migrations bring painted ladies through France in numbers that briefly outnumber almost every resident species. The same species shows up in force on the other side of the Atlantic too, as described in this overview of butterflies across North America.

20. Camberwell Beauty

The Camberwell beauty (Nymphalis antiopa) is a large, dark maroon-brown butterfly edged with a cream-yellow border, a combination that makes it unmistakable whenever it turns up. It is uncommon and irregular in France, appearing mostly as a wandering individual rather than a settled resident.

In North America, where it is far more familiar, the same species goes by the name mourning cloak, a point covered in this guide to Michigan’s butterfly species. Sightings in France tend to cluster in late summer and autumn, often following warm southerly winds.

Important Note: Several large nymphalid species in France, including the Camberwell beauty and large tortoiseshell, have become genuinely scarce over the past few decades. A single sighting is still notable rather than routine, even in good habitat.

21. Large Tortoiseshell

The large tortoiseshell (Nymphalis polychloros) resembles the familiar small tortoiseshell but is noticeably bigger and shows duller orange coloring with fewer blue crescents along the wing margins. It feeds on elm, willow, and poplar as a caterpillar, which has tied its fortunes to the health of those tree populations.

Dutch elm disease contributed to sharp declines across much of its former range in Western Europe, and it is now considered uncommon to rare across most of France. Where it does persist, woodland edges and orchards near mature elm or willow trees offer the best chance of a sighting.

22. Small Tortoiseshell

The small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) is a familiar garden butterfly with bright orange wings patterned in black spots and a row of blue crescents along the edges. Nettles are its only caterpillar host plant, so a patch of stinging nettle left uncut is often enough to attract egg-laying females.

It overwinters as an adult, often indoors in sheds or attics, and can emerge on mild winter days before returning to shelter. Despite remaining common in much of France, populations have thinned out in parts of lowland Britain, making French sightings a useful comparison point for researchers tracking the species’ broader health.

23. Comma

The comma (Polygonia c-album) gets its name from a small white, comma-shaped mark on the underside of its hindwing, visible only when the wings are closed. The ragged, irregular wing outline provides effective camouflage against dead leaves when the butterfly is at rest.

It feeds on nettles, hops, and elm as a caterpillar and occupies woodland edges, gardens, and hedgerows across virtually all of France. Two distinct seasonal forms exist, with summer individuals paler than the darker, more jagged-winged adults that emerge in autumn and hibernate through winter.

24. Map Butterfly

The map butterfly (Araschnia levana) is unusual because its two seasonal generations look like entirely different species. Spring adults are orange and black, resembling a small fritillary, while summer adults turn dark brown-black with white bands, closer in appearance to a white admiral.

This seasonal shift, known as polyphenism, is triggered by day length during caterpillar development rather than genetics alone. It favors damp woodland clearings and riverside vegetation, feeding on nettles in both generations despite the dramatic change in adult appearance.

25. White Admiral

The white admiral (Limenitis camilla) has dark brown-black wings crossed by a broad white band, giving it a striking, almost graphic appearance in flight. It favors shaded deciduous woodland, particularly where honeysuckle, its caterpillar host plant, climbs through the understory.

Unlike many nymphalids, it rarely visits flowers for nectar, instead feeding on aphid honeydew, tree sap, and animal droppings. Its gliding flight, alternating slow wingbeats with long glides, makes it recognizable even before the wing pattern comes into clear view.

26. Purple Emperor

The purple emperor (Apatura iris) is one of the most sought-after butterflies in France, with males showing a brilliant structural purple sheen that shifts with the light and disappears entirely from certain angles. It spends most of its time high in oak canopy, making ground-level sightings genuinely difficult.

Males occasionally descend to feed on animal droppings, mud, or carrion rather than flowers, a behavior that surprises many first-time observers. Readers interested in other species sharing this distinctive coloring can explore the full range of purple butterfly species found around the world.

27. Lesser Purple Emperor

The lesser purple emperor (Apatura ilia) is smaller than its relative and shows a similar iridescent sheen, though it often appears more blue-violet than deep purple depending on lighting conditions. A pale orange form, once thought to be a separate species, occurs alongside the typical dark form in many populations.

It favors poplar and willow woodland along rivers, since its caterpillars feed exclusively on these trees. Like the true purple emperor, males are drawn to damp mud, dung, and carrion far more readily than to flowers.

28. Marbled White

The marbled white (Melanargia galathea) has a distinctive black-and-white checkerboard wing pattern that makes it one of the easiest butterflies in France to identify at a glance, despite belonging to the brown family rather than the whites. It flies through grassland, meadows, and roadside verges from June through August.

Caterpillars feed on various grasses, and the species tolerates a wide range of grassland management styles better than many of its more specialized relatives. It ranks among the most frequently recorded butterflies across French grassland surveys, often rivaling the meadow brown in sheer numbers.

29. Meadow Brown

The meadow brown (Maniola jurtina) is a plain brown butterfly with a single eyespot near each forewing tip, unremarkable in appearance but remarkably successful across nearly every grassy habitat in France. Survey data has consistently ranked it as the most abundant butterfly counted in France, ahead of the marbled white and various white species.

Its caterpillars feed on a wide range of common grasses, which partly explains its tolerance for everything from intensive farmland to wild meadow. Anyone comparing grassland butterfly communities elsewhere might find the overlap with species covered in this guide to butterflies found in Iowa worth a look.

30. Speckled Wood

The speckled wood (Pararge aegeria) has brown wings dappled with cream-yellow spots, a pattern that mimics the dappled light of a woodland floor almost perfectly. It is one of the few European butterflies equally comfortable in deep shade and open sun, and males defend small patches of sunlight as territory against rival males.

It occurs in woodland, hedgerows, and shaded gardens across virtually all of France, often continuing to fly later into autumn than most other species. The same preference for forest-edge habitat shows up in species profiled in this roundup of woodland butterflies in Arkansas.

31. Wall Brown

The wall brown (Lasiommata megera) has orange-brown wings marked with dark eyespots and faint banding, and gets its common name from its habit of basking on walls, rocks, and bare ground to absorb heat. It prefers dry, open habitats with patches of bare soil for basking and nearby grasses for its caterpillars.

Populations have declined sharply across parts of lowland Western Europe in recent decades, for reasons that remain only partly understood. France still holds reasonably strong populations in the south, though numbers thin out noticeably further north.

32. Ringlet

The ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus) is a dark chocolate-brown butterfly marked with small ring-shaped eyespots on both wing surfaces, giving the species its name. It tolerates cooler, damper conditions better than most grassland butterflies and often remains active on overcast days when other species stay hidden.

Damp meadows, woodland rides, and hedgerow margins across most of France suit it well, with adults flying from June into August. Its tolerance for shade and moisture sets it apart from the sun-loving grassland species covered in this guide to prairie and grassland butterflies in Kansas.

33. Scotch Argus

The Scotch argus (Erebia aethiops) is a dark brown mountain butterfly with orange bands containing black eyespots, restricted in France to cooler upland habitats in the east and in isolated mountain populations. It flies in a single generation, usually from late July through August, when temperatures at altitude finally warm enough to sustain it.

Despite the English name’s Scottish association, the species ranges widely across montane Europe, with French populations occupying similar high-elevation niches to those covered in this guide to mountain butterfly species in Arizona. Damp, grassy slopes with scattered scrub provide its preferred habitat.

34. Grayling

The grayling (Hipparchia semele) is a master of camouflage, closing its wings immediately upon landing and angling its body to minimize its shadow against bare ground or rock. Its mottled gray-brown underside pattern makes it nearly invisible once settled, even at close range.

It favors dry, sparsely vegetated habitats including heathland, dunes, and rocky hillsides across much of France. Unlike many browns, it rarely nectars at flowers for long, preferring to bask directly on warm, bare substrate between short flights.

35. Spanish Gatekeeper

The Spanish gatekeeper (Pyronia bathseba) resembles the more widespread gatekeeper but shows bolder, more defined eyespots and a slightly different underwing pattern. It is restricted to the warmer habitats of southern France, overlapping with Mediterranean scrub and open woodland edges.

Its range barely extends north of the Mediterranean climate zone, making it one of the more geographically limited brown species on this list. Flight period runs from late spring through summer, with adults favoring sunny clearings and field margins.

36. Silver-washed Fritillary

The silver-washed fritillary (Argynnis paphia) is the largest fritillary found in France, with orange-and-black upperwings and a striking greenish wash of silver streaks across the underside. It inhabits broadleaf woodland and forest clearings, where males patrol sunlit rides in search of females.

An unusual courtship behavior sees the male loop beneath the female in flight, releasing pheromones from specialized wing scales. A similar diversity of large, woodland-dwelling fritillaries appears in this guide to fritillary and woodland species in Texas.

Fritillary Species	Typical Habitat	Flight Period
Silver-washed Fritillary	Broadleaf woodland, forest rides	June to August
Dark Green Fritillary	Grassland, scrub, coastal dunes	June to August
Queen of Spain Fritillary	Open ground, fallow fields	March to October (multi-brood)
Glanville Fritillary	Coastal grassland, chalk slopes	April to June

37. Dark Green Fritillary

The dark green fritillary (Argynnis aglaja) shows the typical orange-and-black fritillary pattern above, but the underside of the hindwing carries a distinctive greenish tint mixed with silver spots. It ranges from coastal dunes to mountain meadows, making it one of the more widely distributed fritillaries in France.

Violets serve as the caterpillar host plant, and females scatter eggs near but not directly on the plants, a strategy that helps young caterpillars find fresh growth the following spring after overwintering. Adults fly through most of the summer across suitable grassland habitat.

38. Queen of Spain Fritillary

The Queen of Spain fritillary (Issoria lathonia) is smaller and faster-flying than most fritillaries, with large, mirror-like silver patches on the underside of the hindwing that catch the light distinctively. It can produce several generations a year in warm climates, giving it a much longer flight season than most relatives.

It favors open, disturbed ground including fallow fields, dunes, and waste ground rather than the woodland edges preferred by larger fritillaries. Strong migratory tendencies mean numbers can shift noticeably from one region of France to another within a single season.

39. Glanville Fritillary

The Glanville fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) has an orange-and-black checkered pattern typical of its genus, with a distinctive row of black-and-white spots along the wing margins. It ranks among the butterfly species most commonly seen across France, particularly in coastal grassland and chalky slopes.

Caterpillars feed communally in silk webs on plantain before dispersing to complete development individually. A single generation typically flies from April through June, making spring the best window for finding this species in the field.

40. Common Blue

The common blue (Polyommatus icarus) is the most widespread blue butterfly in France, with males showing bright violet-blue upperwings and females typically brown with orange and blue markings along the edges. It is counted among the most frequently seen butterfly species in the country, turning up in meadows, gardens, and roadside verges everywhere from coastal lowlands to mid-elevation slopes.

Bird’s-foot trefoil and related legumes serve as the main caterpillar host plants, and multiple generations fly between spring and early autumn depending on local climate. Its sheer abundance makes it a useful baseline species for comparing rarer blues against.

41. Adonis Blue

The Adonis blue (Polyommatus bellargus) is arguably the most vividly colored blue in France, with males displaying an almost electric sky-blue that outshines the common blue at close range. French naturalists sometimes call it “le Bel-Argus,” reflecting its status as a prized grassland species among surveyors.

It depends heavily on horseshoe vetch growing on well-grazed chalk and limestone grassland, which has made it sensitive to changes in traditional grazing practices. Two generations typically fly each year, with the brightest males usually appearing in the second, late-summer brood.

42. Large Blue

The large blue (Phengaris arion) has one of the strangest life cycles of any European butterfly. After hatching on thyme flowers, young caterpillars drop to the ground and release chemical signals that trick red ant colonies into carrying them into their nests, where they spend most of their development feeding on ant grubs.

This specialized, parasitic relationship makes the species extremely sensitive to changes in ant population density, and it has gone extinct and been reintroduced in parts of Europe as a result. In France, it persists in scattered chalk and limestone grassland sites where both thyme and the right ant species occur together.

Key Insight: The large blue’s caterpillars mimic the scent and sound of ant grubs closely enough to be adopted and fed by worker ants, one of the more unusual survival strategies documented in European insects.

43. Chalkhill Blue

The chalkhill blue (Polyommatus coridon) is a pale, silvery-blue butterfly in males, distinctly less vivid than the Adonis blue, with females showing a plainer brown pattern. In southern France it shares chalk grassland habitat with the closely related Provence chalkhill blue, a southwest European endemic.

Horseshoe vetch again serves as the main caterpillar host plant, tying its distribution to the same limestone and chalk grassland favored by the Adonis blue. A single generation flies in late summer, typically from July into September.

44. Small Copper

The small copper (Lycaena phlaeas) is a small, fast-flying butterfly with bright copper-orange forewings marked by black spots and darker brown hindwings edged in orange. It occupies almost any open, sunny habitat across France, from waste ground to mountain meadows.

Sorrel and dock serve as the main caterpillar host plants, and the species can produce up to three generations in warmer parts of its range. Males are notably territorial, often chasing off rival butterflies many times their own size from a favored perch.

45. Large Copper

The large copper (Lycaena dispar) is considerably bigger and brighter than the small copper, with males showing an almost fluorescent orange sheen across the upperwings. It is far rarer in France than its smaller relative, restricted to wetland habitats with abundant water dock, its primary caterpillar host plant.

Drainage of wet meadows and marshland across Western Europe has driven sharp declines in this species, and it has disappeared entirely from Britain outside reintroduction efforts. Remaining French populations are concentrated in a handful of protected wetland sites, making sightings a genuine highlight for visiting naturalists.

46. Purple Hairstreak

The purple hairstreak (Favonius quercus) spends most of its life high in oak canopy, which makes it one of the most overlooked butterflies in France despite being fairly common wherever mature oaks grow. Males show an iridescent purple sheen across the upperwings that is often only visible in direct sunlight.

Adults rarely visit flowers, instead feeding on honeydew produced by aphids living in the oak canopy above them, which explains why they are so rarely seen at ground level. Late afternoon, when males engage in brief territorial flights above the treetops, offers the best chance of spotting this quietly common species.

Pro Tip: Midday sun between 11am and 3pm brings out the widest range of species, since most French butterflies need direct warmth to fly efficiently and defend territory.

Forty-six species only scratch the surface of what France has to offer; with 253 recorded butterflies across the country, there is always another species waiting in a different habitat or region. Chalk grassland, alpine meadows, Mediterranean scrub, and river valleys each support their own distinct mix, which is part of what makes French butterfly watching rewarding across every season from early spring through late autumn.

Anyone building out a broader interest in butterfly diversity elsewhere might enjoy comparing notes with this breakdown of how many butterfly species exist worldwide, which puts France’s 253 species into a global context.