Discover where to find a red-spotted purple butterfly. See what the butterfly looks like and what host plants will bring one into your yard.
How to Identify a Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly
Updated on Mar. 25, 2025
A butterfly in your yard is always a welcome sight, but if that butterfly shimmers? Even better! The red-spotted purple butterfly has an iridescent sheen that makes it truly eye-catching. Here’s what you need to know about this pretty pollinator.
Meet the red admiral butterfly and learn how to attract them.
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Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly Markings
These gorgeous butterflies glimmer in the sunlight. From above, they are mostly black and iridescent blue with small orange spots on the wing tips. In addition, more red-orange markings are visible from below.
Learn how to identify and attract a red admiral butterfly.
Where to Find a Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly
Red-spotted purples aren’t found throughout the whole United States, so your best bet of finding one is in the eastern part of the country. Additional populations are found in the Southwest as well. In those regions, you’re most likely to find one in wooded areas. They’re commonly found in suburbs.
Here’s how to tell the difference between moths vs butterflies.
What Do Red-Spotted Purple Butterflies Eat?
Flower nectar isn’t the preferred diet for these colorful fliers. Instead, to attract them to your yard, you’ll want to serve fruit. Offer them overripe bananas, citrus, apples or any other juicy fruit. They may also visit sugar-water feeders.
Red-Spotted Purple Caterpillar
Red spotted purple caterpillars give little indication of the lovely creature they’ll grow up to be! The brown, green and white caterpillars have humps on their backs and dark-colored hornlike appendages.
Red-Spotted Purple Host Plants
Unlike a monarch butterfly, you cannot attract the red-spotted purple to backyards with milkweed plants. Cottonwoods, willows, wild cherries and other trees are their preferred host plants.
Regional Forms
“What’s this butterfly on my deck?” asks Birds & Blooms reader Linda Saverino of Hermitage, Pennsylvania.
Experts Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman say, “The short answer is that this butterfly is usually called a red-spotted purple. But it’s also called red-spotted admiral, and that reflects an intriguing fact. This butterfly has a double identity, with two regional forms that look different. The one in your photo, the red-spotted purple, is widespread in the Southeast.”
Kenn and Kimberly continue, “You can find the other one, the white admiral (pictured above), across Alaska, Canada, and parts of the northern states. It has a broad white band across black wings, and red spots on the hindwings. Where you are in Pennsylvania, you might see intermediates that share some markings of both forms, so it’s worth watching for them.”
Next, discover fascinating butterfly facts you didn’t know.
