The Common Lascar is a species of nymphalid

Nymphalidae

The Nymphalidae is a family of about 5,000 species of butterflies which are distributed throughout most of the world. These are usually medium sized to large butterflies. Most species have a reduced pair of forelegs and many hold their colourful wings flat when resting. They are also called...

 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...

 found in tropical and subtropical Asia.

Wet-season form

Both male and female have upperside black with orange markings. Fore wing: discoidal streak broad, anteriorly twice indented, at apex extending into base of interspace 3; posterior discal spots coalescent, forming an irregular oblique short broad band ; anterior spots also coalescent, oblique from costa; a postdiscal obscure grey incurved transverse line, and a very slender, also obscure, orange transverse subterminal line. Hind wing: a subbasal transverse broad band, and a much narrower postdiscal band curved inwards at the ends; beyond this the black terminal margin is traversed by a darker black subterminal line. Underside chestnut-brown, covered with short, slender, transverse brown striae on the margin of the orange markings, which are similar to those on the upperside but broader, paler, and less clearly defined. Fore wing : the pale transverse postdiscal and orange subterminal lines of the upperside replaced by a postdiscal lilacine narrow band, defined by somewhat crenulate chestnut-brown lines on each side, and a pale subterminal line. Hind wing: the base suffused with lilacine; the subbasal and postdiscal bands bordered outwardly by narrow lilacine bands, the orange-yellow of the postdiscal band much obscured by the transverse brown strife; the terminal margin with a sinuous obscure broad lilacine line. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen black; beneath, the palpi and thorax

Thorax

The thorax is a division of an animal's body that lies between the head and the abdomen.-In tetrapods:...

 greyish, abdomen ochraceous.

Dry-season form

Males and females are similar to the wet-season form, but the markings are very much broader; on the upperside of the fore wing the postdiscal line generally and the subterminal line always clearly defined, the former sometimes like the latter, orange-yellow, Underside paler, the markings more blurred, the transverse short brown striae in many specimens covering nearly the whole surface of the wings.

Expanse: 38-44 mm

Race sinuata Moore (restricted to Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

) is a slightly differentiated island form. It differs constantly from the typical form in the margins of the discal markings (especially the outer margins) on the upperside of the fore wing and the margins of the subbasal and postdiscal bands of the hind wing being more sinuous.

Distribution

Continental India, from the Himalayas to the Western Ghats

Western Ghats

The Western Ghats, Western Ghauts or the Sahyādri is a mountain range along the western side of India. It runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain along the Arabian Sea. The Western Ghats block rainfall to the Deccan...

; Assam; Burma; Tenasserim, extending into the Malayan sub-region.

Larva

"Has two forms. In the first the head is large and roughly triangular, the segments of the body increase to the fourth and then diminish gradually, and the third, fourth, sixth and twelfth have each two obtuse dorsal points. The fore part from the fourth segment is generally inclined downwards at an angle with the rest of the body and is with the underpays of a dark greenish-brown colour. The rest is just that shade of greenish-grey which the leaves assume when withered, and is crossed by diagonal dark bands exactly representing the spaces between the leaflets as a painter would paint them—a most perfect disguise. The second form of the larva differs in having the head furcate, while the dorsal points are replaced by long spine-like processes. The figure will give a better idea of the difference than any description.......The butterfly resulting from the larva with spines has a light male-mark ; that resulting from the other a dark male-mark.......The two forms of larva are never found together; the smooth type of caterpillar is often found in quantities on one bush .... the smooth caterpillar feeds on Acacia

Acacia

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, whereas the majority of Australian acacias are not...

and Albizzia, the spined one has never been found on any plant but Acacia." (Davidson, Bell and Aitken

Edward Hamilton Aitken

Edward Hamilton Aitken was a civil servant in India, better known for his humorist writings on natural history in India and as a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society...

)