(Photo: courtesy of Mark Hopkinson)

The pupa is brown with dark spots, and has a length just over 1 cm. It is formed typically in a curled leaf in the debris near the base of a foodplant.

Male
(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Collection, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney)

The male adults are an iridescent purple on top.

Female
(Photo: courtesy of Bob Miller and Ian Hill)

The female is brown with some mauve iridescence extending from the bases.

Male, underside
(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Collection, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney)

Underneath, they are pale brown with rows of orange spots outlined in black and iridescent green.

Female, underside
(Photo: courtesy of Bob Miller and Ian Hill)

The butterflies have a wing span of about 3 cms.

The eggs are laid singly under a leaf of a foodplant.

The species occurs mainly in

and the subspecies euclides Miskin, 1889, is found in a small region of the north-east coast of Australia in

Female, underside
(Photo: courtesy of Jim Hackett, Cairns, Queensland)

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 663-664.

Baron Cajetan Felder & Rudolf Felder,
Zoologischer Theil: Lepidoptera,
Reise der Osterreichischen Fregatte Novara,
Band 2, Abtheilung 2, Part 2 (1865), pp. 254-255, No. 300.

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(updated 29 September 2010, 2 May 2023)