Fritileán réisc in Gaeilge. The Marsh Fritillary, Euphydryas aurinia, is Ireland’s most conservation-significant butterfly, protected under Annex II of the EU Habitats Directive.
Identify it in four steps
- Upperside patterned with orange, cream, and dark brown blocks in an intricate chequered arrangement, brighter and more contrasted than any other Irish fritillary.
- Hindwing upperside carries a row of small black dots inside the marginal band, a diagnostic feature separating it from the Silver-washed and Dark Green Fritillaries.
- Underside hindwing pale orange with a broad cream band, a much simpler pattern than the silvered underside of the larger fritillaries.
- Wingspan 30 to 50 mm; flight is a low, slow flutter across wet grassland, rarely more than a metre above the sward.
Habitat in Ireland
The Marsh Fritillary depends entirely on Devil’s-bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis) as its larval foodplant. It occupies wet, unimproved species-rich grassland, coastal machair, and calcareous fens with a variable sward that combines abundant scabious rosettes and sheltered warm patches.
Larvae feed communally in a silk web through late summer and again in spring after overwintering. Populations are notoriously cyclical, boosted or crashed by parasitoid wasps (Cotesia melitaearum), and can vanish from apparently suitable sites for years before returning.
Where to see it
- the Burren, County Clare: species-rich limestone grassland and turloughs support the strongest western populations.
- Sheskinmore Nature Reserve, County Donegal: wet machair and dune-slack scabious grassland.
- the Slievenamon foothills, County Tipperary: rushy pasture and unimproved wet grassland with dense Devil’s-bit Scabious.
Listed on Annex II of the EU Habitats Directive; assessed Vulnerable in the Butterfly Conservation Ireland Red List (2010, revised 2019); recorded in 18 of the 26 counties in the National Biodiversity Data Centre atlas 2014-2019, with continued decline reported in the NPWS Article 17 assessment.
Related species
- Silver-washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia)
- Dark Green Fritillary (Speyeria aglaja)
- Pearl-bordered Fritillary (Boloria euphrosyne)
Recorded in 22 of 26 Irish counties in the National Biodiversity Data Centre atlas, with the strongest concentrations in Munster and eastern Leinster. Numbers dropped through the 2010s and partially recovered from 2019 onward.1
Source: National Biodiversity Data Centre butterfly atlas 2014 to 2019, and Butterfly Conservation Ireland annual review 2024.
