Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Some of my 'entertainment' .. II, 1 by TexasPuddyPrint

TexasPuddyPrint wrote:
Magpye,

WOW!!! Awesome photos! Am glad I finally made the time to catch up looking at posts. I really enjoy those close up shots...you can see just about every detail on those butterflies.

I think that photo of the Empress Leilia is a hackberry though. The hackberry can be distinguished because the lower bar on the forewing is broken...as opposed to empress leilia and tawny emperors which have both bars complete. ALTHOUGH, your butterfly appears to have the coloration markings of the Empress Leilia on the hind wing. Maybe you have a cross? I went to a seminar on "Emperors" and there are gobs and gobs of sub-species of these guys. All kinds of variations and crosses - quite confusing and very hard to call out in the field.

The main thing I look for is the broken cell bar on the forewing to tell which is a hackberry out here. We get inundated with tawny emperors but they are easy to spot as they don't have forewing submarginal spots.

Every once in a while I find an Empress in the tawny mix.

Here's a photo of an Empress Leilia from down in the south tip of Texas. Note: Both forewing bars are complete.

...but again...maybe you have one of the crosses - guess you can try looking up information to see if the empress leilia has been recorded as having a broken forewing cell bar.