15 Types of Butterflies in Maryland: A Field Identification Guide
September 16, 2026
Step into a Maryland meadow on a warm June afternoon and you’ll likely see more than one kind of butterfly working the same patch of milkweed or joe-pye weed. From the state’s own rare, checker-patterned emblem to the orange-and-black monarchs that pass through on their way south, the types of butterflies in Maryland span nearly every size, color, and habit imaginable.
Maryland’s mix of coastal plain, piedmont, and mountain habitats supports a genuinely large butterfly community. Maryland Department of Natural Resources notes that Maryland has over 150 species of butterflies and skippers. That range in size is dramatic too, since Maryland’s butterflies range in size from the large, showy Giant Swallowtail to the tiny and easily overlooked Eastern Tailed-Blue. If you want a broader sense of how that number stacks up against total butterfly diversity worldwide, this breakdown of how many types of butterflies exist puts Maryland’s count in perspective.
Below are 15 species you’re most likely to encounter across the state’s gardens, forest edges, and wetlands, along with the plants and behaviors that make each one identifiable in the field.
| Common Name | Family | Best Time to Spot | Typical Habitat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Giant Swallowtail | Swallowtail | Summer | Forest edges, gardens |
| Eastern Tailed-Blue | Gossamer-wing | Spring through fall | Fields, roadsides |
| Monarch | Brush-footed | Late summer to fall | Meadows, milkweed patches |
| Painted Lady | Brush-footed | Variable by year | Open, sunny fields |
| Red Admiral | Brush-footed | Spring and fall | Forest edges, moist areas |
| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail | Swallowtail | Spring through summer | Woodlands, gardens |
| Viceroy | Brush-footed | Summer | Wetlands, streamsides |
| Baltimore Checkerspot | Brush-footed | June | Wet meadows |
| Red-spotted Purple | Brush-footed | Summer | Deciduous woods |
| American Lady | Brush-footed | Spring through fall | Gardens, old fields |
| Mourning Cloak | Brush-footed | Early spring | Woodlands |
| Question Mark | Brush-footed | Spring through fall | Woodland edges |
| Zebra Swallowtail | Swallowtail | Spring through summer | Pawpaw thickets |
| Pearl Crescent | Brush-footed | Spring through fall | Meadows, roadsides |
| Black Swallowtail | Swallowtail | Spring through fall | Gardens, fields |
1. Giant Swallowtail
The Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) earns its name honestly. It’s the largest butterfly regularly seen in the eastern United States, with dark brown wings crossed by a diagonal band of yellow spots that becomes especially obvious in flight.
Its caterpillar, sometimes called the “orangedog,” is one of the odder-looking larvae you’ll find on Maryland’s types of caterpillars list. Mottled brown and lumpy, it resembles bird droppings clinging to a leaf, a disguise that helps it avoid predators while feeding on hoptree and prickly ash. Adults nectar readily on lantana, azalea, and other tubular garden flowers, and they often glide rather than flap, making them easy to spot even at a distance.
2. Eastern Tailed-Blue
At the opposite end of the size spectrum sits the Eastern Tailed-Blue, a butterfly so small it’s frequently mistaken for a moving speck of blue lint. This is the tiny species referenced when researchers describe how Maryland’s butterfly community spans extremes in size, and it’s easily overlooked next to showier swallowtails.
Males show a pale, silvery blue on the upper wing surface, while females lean more brown or gray with only a hint of blue near the body. Look for the tiny hair-like “tails” on the hindwing and a pair of small orange spots near the tail tips. These butterflies favor clover, vetch, and other low legumes growing in disturbed fields and roadside edges, and their small size and quick flight make close-up viewing more rewarding than a distant glimpse.
3. Monarch
No butterfly in Maryland draws more attention than the monarch (Danaus plexippus). Monarchs are among the most easily recognizable butterfly species for their stained-glass aesthetics, with orange wings with black veins and two rows of white dots aligned along the black-colored edges.
Despite well-documented population declines, even with the dwindling population of the butterfly species, monarchs are still among the most common butterflies in Maryland. Late-summer monarchs gather on goldenrod and joe-pye weed before beginning a multi-generation migration south, a journey that carries many of them straight through the range covered in this guide to types of butterflies in Texas on their way toward overwintering grounds in Mexico.
Pro Tip: Plant native milkweed species like common milkweed or swamp milkweed rather than tropical milkweed, which can disrupt monarch migration timing in warmer climates.
4. Painted Lady
The Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) is one of the most widely distributed butterflies on Earth, and Maryland sees healthy numbers most years. Painted Lady butterflies have a wingspan of 1.75 to 2.5 inches, with pinkish-orange coloring marked by dark brown to black patches near the wingtips and white spots inside those black markings.
Look for them in quiet, undisturbed open areas like roadsides, pastures, and gardens. Unlike many resident species, Painted Ladies migrate south to Mexico over winter and return in the spring, and the population of Painted Lady butterflies can be drastically different from year to year, so a summer with dozens visible may be followed by a much quieter season. Gardeners hoping to compare notes with other regions may find it useful to browse types of butterflies in Colorado, where the same migratory species shows up in very different numbers depending on drought and bloom timing.
5. Red Admiral
The Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) is arguably the friendliest butterfly on this list. Red Admirals have a wingspan of 1.75 to 2.5 inches, with dark brown coloring set off by a reddish circular band and white spots. The underside of the hindwing is mottled to resemble tree bark, camouflage that works well when the butterfly rests on trunks near forest edges.
Red Admirals have an unusual favorite food: Red Admiral butterflies love fermented fruit, and gardeners can attract them by setting out overripe, cut fruit in a sunny spot. They’re also genuinely calm around people; if you’re looking for a butterfly in Maryland that’s easy to observe, Red Admirals are very calm and easy to approach and frequently land on humans. Like several species on this list, they’re migratory, moving south in winter and returning north as food becomes plentiful again in spring, a pattern shared with several butterflies found further north in types of butterflies in Vermont.
6. Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) is probably the swallowtail most Marylanders picture first: bright yellow wings crossed by bold black tiger stripes, with blue accents near the tails on females. As with all swallowtails, this species gets its name from the shape of its hind wings, which look like the pointy tails of swallows.
Females come in two color forms in Maryland. Most show the classic yellow-and-black pattern, but some females are almost entirely dark brown or black, a mimicry strategy that echoes the toxic pipevine swallowtail and helps deter predators. Look for this species along woodland edges and in gardens stocked with butterfly bush, zinnia, or phlox, and check nearby types of beetles in Maryland resources if you’re curious what else shares those same flowering shrubs.
7. Viceroy
The Viceroy (Limenitis archippus) is famous for one thing above all: looking almost exactly like a monarch. Both species share the same orange-and-black pattern, and telling them apart at a glance trips up even experienced birders.
The reliable giveaway is a single black line that curves across the veins of the hindwing, a feature monarchs lack entirely. Viceroys are also noticeably smaller and fly with a quicker, more erratic flutter compared to the monarch’s steady glide. Their caterpillars feed on willow and poplar near streams and wetlands, and the mimicry itself is a textbook example of how prey species deter the same predators covered in this guide to animals that eat butterflies.
Key Insight: Viceroy mimicry was long taught as one-directional protection borrowed from the monarch, but research now shows Viceroys are just as unpalatable to predators, making this a case of mutual mimicry rather than simple copying.
8. Baltimore Checkerspot
The Baltimore Checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton) holds a special title among the types of butterflies in Maryland: it’s the official state insect. It has been the official state insect of the U.S. State of Maryland since 1973, and the species was named for the first Lord Baltimore due to its similarity of colors in the family crest, matching black-and-orange markings to the Calvert family crest.
Its lifecycle is closely tied to one plant. Like other butterflies, the Baltimore Checkerspot searches for one kind of host plant from which it will gain nourishment, and the White Turtlehead is the only host plant that this butterfly will use in most of its native range. Females lay eggs in large clusters, and female butterflies lay one brood of 100 to 700 eggs under the leaves of white turtlehead. Adults appear on a tight schedule, since the flight period is in June, and they nectar on flowering plants that bloom during their flight period, such as milkweeds, dogbane, several species of mountain mint, wild rose and wild blackberry.
Important Note: Despite the species status as Maryland state insect, the population in Maryland has faced significant decline and is currently listed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources as “rare, threatened, and endangered.” Historically, these butterflies were found in 15 Maryland counties, but today their wild colonies are known to exist in only about 8 counties, mostly isolated populations. Anyone wanting the full picture of the state’s at-risk species should see this list of endangered animals in Maryland.
9. Red-spotted Purple
The Red-spotted Purple is a striking dark butterfly with wings that shift between blue and violet depending on the light, edged with rows of pale blue spots. It’s a close relative of the white admiral found farther north and belongs to the same genus as the Viceroy.
Younger caterpillars are twig mimics, blending into bare branches of black cherry, willow, and poplar until they’re ready to feed on leaves. Adults are frequently seen sipping moisture from damp gravel roads or feeding on rotting fruit and even carrion, a less glamorous habit than nectaring but a reliable one for identification. If you’re drawn to butterflies with this kind of iridescent coloring, the roundup of types of purple butterflies covers several close relatives worth comparing side by side.
10. American Lady
The American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis) is often confused with its cousin the Painted Lady, and understandably so, since both share pinkish-orange wings with dark markings. The clearest field mark is on the underside of the hindwing: American Ladies show two large eyespots, while Painted Ladies show a row of four or five smaller ones.
Caterpillars feed almost exclusively on plants in the aster family, particularly pussytoes and everlasting, spinning silk shelters among the leaves as they grow. Like most small butterflies in open gardens, American Ladies face real pressure from ambush predators; the same web-building hunters covered in this guide to types of spiders in Maryland regularly take butterflies resting on flowerheads.
11. Mourning Cloak
The Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa) breaks nearly every rule of typical butterfly behavior. Its wings are a deep maroon-brown bordered by a ragged band of pale yellow and a row of blue spots, a somber palette that gives the species its name.
Unlike most Maryland butterflies, Mourning Cloaks overwinter as adults rather than eggs, larvae, or pupae, tucking into bark crevices and emerging on the first warm days of late winter, sometimes while snow is still on the ground. That cold tolerance makes them one of the earliest butterflies seen each year, a trait shared with several species profiled in the guide to types of butterflies in Iowa, where similarly harsh winters shape which species survive to spring.
12. Question Mark
The Question Mark (Polygonia interrogationis) takes its name from a small silver mark on the underside of the hindwing that, with a bit of imagination, resembles a question mark punctuated by a dot. The upper wings are ragged-edged and orange with black spots, making the butterfly look almost tattered at rest.
This species has two seasonal forms: a summer form with mostly black hindwings and a fall form with more orange coloring that carries the butterfly through winter as a hibernating adult. Question Marks favor rotting fruit and tree sap over flower nectar, often gathering at the same sap flows and fermenting windfalls that attract certain types of butterflies in Indiana and other Midwestern species with similar tastes.
13. Zebra Swallowtail
Few Maryland butterflies are as instantly recognizable as the Zebra Swallowtail. The Zebra Swallowtail is distinct for wing patterns resembling zebra stripes, with red spots on the wings toward the end of the lower part of the body and red-colored antennae.
Its entire life cycle depends on one plant family. In landscapes offering nectar plants like Sweet William, milkweed, and cosmos or host plants like pawpaw, you can find Zebra Swallowtails in higher populations, since pawpaw is the only larval host this species uses. That tight pawpaw dependence links Maryland’s population to the same understory trees found in warmer types of butterflies in Florida, where pawpaw thickets support even larger colonies.
Pro Tip: Planting a young pawpaw tree in a partly shaded corner of the yard is one of the most reliable ways to attract egg-laying Zebra Swallowtails, since females rarely stray far from their host plant.
14. Pearl Crescent
The Pearl Crescent is a small, orange-and-black checkered butterfly that’s easy to dismiss as “just another little orange one” until you look closely at the crescent-shaped pale mark on the hindwing border that gives the species its name.
These butterflies produce multiple broods each year and stay active from spring through fall, making them one of the most consistently visible species in Maryland fields, lawns edges, and roadside meadows. Caterpillars feed on various asters, and adults nectar on low-growing flowers rather than tall garden blooms. Their meadow habits overlap with several ground-nesting insects covered in the guide to types of ants in Maryland, which share the same open, sunny habitat.
15. Black Swallowtail
The Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) rounds out this list as one of the most garden-friendly species on it, since caterpillars readily feed on dill, parsley, fennel, and carrot tops planted in vegetable beds. Black Swallowtails are common butterflies across the whole eastern USA, and Maryland gardeners often find their caterpillars before ever spotting an adult.
Timing varies by generation. In Maryland, this species has between two and three generations per year, with the first generation or generations of a season reaching adulthood within the season, and the last one spending the winter in pupal phase and emerging as an adult the following spring. Adult males patrol open fields for mates, while females are drawn to flowering herbs, making a backyard herb garden one of the easiest ways to host this species without any special landscaping.
Maryland’s mix of coastal wetlands, hardwood forests, and open farmland is exactly why the state supports such a wide range of butterfly families side by side, from the pawpaw-dependent Zebra Swallowtail to the turtlehead-bound Baltimore Checkerspot. Anyone building a butterfly garden can use this list as a starting point: mix milkweed and joe-pye weed for Monarchs and Painted Ladies with dill or parsley for swallowtail caterpillars, and leave a few damp, sunny patches of bare ground where adults can rest and warm their wings.
For a full species checklist beyond the 15 covered here, the Wikipedia list of Maryland butterflies documents the broader diversity across skippers, whites, and hairstreaks not detailed in this guide.