Art Shapiro's Butterfly Site
Monitoring butterfly populations across Central California for more than 35 years… Erynnis brizo lacustra
Common Name: Sleepy Dusky-Wing, Leather Oak Dusky-Wing
A narrow endemic in our fauna, restricted to serpentine soils in both the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada foothills, where its only known host plant in the North State, Leather Oak (Serpentine Scrub Oak), Quercus durata, occurs. Its southernmost population in our area is at Meadowbrook, near Georgetown. Farther south in both ranges it is not confined to serpentine and seems to use several shrubby oaks as hosts, but never in our area.
There are breeding populations near Nevada City, Grass Valley, and Coloma, but this species occurs on our transect only as a very rare stray.
An avid puddler. Commoner in the North Coast Range than in the Sierra, where it is usually seen twisting into and among leather oak thickets - magically going into one, but coming out of another! Visits wild onion, yellow Composites, etc. One brood only, March-June.
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