White from the Savoie - ID help please

[Sylvie_h]

I really don't know how I should label this pretty butterfly. My feeling is that it is a green veined white with reduced markings maybe ? It was found at 900m in Savoie (73) . Can anybody with a good knowledge of French butterfly fauna help with this ?
Thank you very much indeed.
Sylvie

[David M]

I find the Green Veined Whites in the Alps to be extremely faintly marked, Sylvie, so much so that guests on our recent trip couldn't believe it when I was calling them such. I actually had to catch one in my vial to show them close up.

In contrast, male Mountain Green Veined Whites are only slightly more darkly marked than regular male GVWs are in the UK.

[Sylvie_h]

Thank you David for confirming the ID.
Sylvie

[Padfield]

In the summer brood, the upperside of green-veined whites is more strongly marked than in the spring but the underside is much more weakly marked. This is true in the UK too. Some summer brood individuals have virtually no evidence of green veining on the underside. Your butterfly is a female, ruling out mountain green-veined, whose females are very heavily marked and suffused with grey on a yellow ground colour. So as David says, this is unambiguously a green-veined white.

Guy

[Sylvie_h]

Hi Guy,

Thank you for the information, it is good insight as I did not know this. Do you know why the summer brood is different than the spring brood?
Sylvie