Canary Large White Pieris cheiranthi
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La Palma - April 2001
The first, rather unimpressive photograph of a female is the best I
could get, despite seeing many individuals, male and female, during a
week on La Palma. Like many Canary Island butterflies, they rarely seem
to stop and this one was only obliging because mist had come over the
hillside for a while. Older books give this as a subspecies of Pieris brassicae,
the Large White, but it seems clear that it is a different species, for
many reasons. The pattern is certainly different, with both male and
female having a clear black brand on the underside of the forewing,
just visible through the hindwing here, and the female having the same
brand on the upperside of the forewing. The species is endemic to the
Canaries.
The next four pictures are taken directly from (long distance!) video frames and show first a male then a female.