Orange tips visit our garden every Spring, sometimes very early. Their food plants include Alliaria petiolata (Jack-by-the Hedge) and Cardamine pratensis (Cuckoo flower) which are both April flowers. On the LHS photo is another Cardamine which they seem to love: Cardamine rapahnifolia (Greater Cuckoo Flower). There were about 20 Orange Tip butterflies moving very quickly between the flowers here.

The cold weather stopped the butterfly in the RHS photo from flying and it was still sitting shivering on the brassica when I left.

LHS: Woods near Witherslack, Cumbria 10th May 200 RHS: Ellesmere Port, Cheshire 18th May 2005

Added on 25th June 2008