The Lucia Azure, Northern Azure, Eastern Spring Azure or Northern Spring Azure (Celastrina lucia) is a species of butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

 of the Lycaenidae

Lycaenidae

The Lycaenidae are the second-largest family of butterflies, with about 6000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies...

 family. It is found eastern North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 from the Maritimes

Maritimes

The Maritime provinces, also called the Maritimes or the Canadian Maritimes, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. On the Atlantic coast, the Maritimes are a subregion of Atlantic Canada, which also includes the...

 south through the Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...

 to West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

.

The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is 22-35 mm. Adults are sexually dimorphic. The dorsal wing surface of males is blue, while females have a broad, dark brown outer forewing margin. They are on wing from April to July.

The larva

Larva

A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle...

e feed on Vaccinium

Vaccinium

Vaccinium is a genus of shrubs or dwarf shrubs in the plant Family Ericaceae. The fruit of many species are eaten by humans and some are of commercial importance, including the cranberry, blueberry, bilberry or whortleberry, lingonberry or cowberry, and huckleberry...

species, including Vaccinium pallidum. They are green, yellow, pink or brown, depending on their food source.

Taxonomy

Until the early 1990s, most North American azures were thought to be a single species (Celastrina ladon

Celastrina ladon

The Spring Azure is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family. It is found in North America from Alaska and Canada south of the tundra through most of the United States except the Texas coast, southern plain and peninsular Florida; south in the mountains to Colombia.Since the publication of a monograph...

). More recently, research has revealed that there are many different species of azures, including Celastrina lucia, which has also been treated as a subspecies Celastrina ladon.