Lunate Zale

Appearance

Adults - quite variable with both fore- and hindwings dark brown with shades of yellow, red brown and black, sometimes with white or silver marginal patches. The larva is smooth, mottled gray, brown, and tan with a swollen mid-dorsal tubercle near the tail.

Zale lunata is our largest Zale species (FW length 21 - 25 mm). It has similar wood-brown forewings and hindwings with innumerable parallel finely scalloped lines. The forewing costa and subterminal line and hindwing postmedial line are darkest. Some specimens have yellow-brown in central forewing between the antemedial line and subterminal line, and some have patches of white and light gray, sometimes faintly greenish, in the terminal areas of both wings. The orbicular spot is a brown dot and the reniform spot is very faint. The wings are scalloped, most pronounced on the hindwing. The posterior thorax with tufts, largest at the posterior tegulae. The antennae are simple in males and females.

Large specimens of this species cannot be confused with other Zale species in our area. Zale lunata is most similar to Zale minerea, a slightly smaller and more vividly colored species. They can be reliably differentiated by the shape of the most lateral projection of the thin dark postmedial line at vein M3. This is bilobed in Z. lunata and bluntly convex in Z. minerea. Zale lunata is larger and browner than Zale rubi, a gray-brown species found mostly in Oregon in our region. This species has a jagged subterminal line that is toothed toward the outer margin that is lacking in Z. lunata.

Naming

Zale lunata (Drury, 1773)
Phalaena lunata Drury, 1773
Phaeocyma lunata
Phalaena edusa Drury, 1773
Erebus putrescens Guerin-Meneville, 1832
Homoptera marginalis Walker, 1865
Homoptera saundersii Bethune, 1865
Homoptera salicis Behr, 1870
Homoptera rosae Behr, 1870

lunata is derived from Latin meaning Moon, probably referenceing the crescent-shaped marks on the wings

Distribution

Texas to Wisconsin east to New England and south to Florida. In the west found from Washington to southern California and east to the Colorado and the Front Range and New Mexico.

Habitat

Yards, parks, thickets, woodlands, and forests

Food

Crumb (1956) listed blackberry, raspberry, salmonberry, rose, willow, and oak. Wagner (2011) adds sensitive plant, cherry, chokeberry, plums, hawthorn, wisteria and occasionally forbes.