- Scientific name: Pieris rapae
- Also known as Cabbage butterfly and Eiropean cabbage butterfly
-The genus, Pieris, was the name of a mythical Greek muse, while rapae comes from the Latin rape, for "turnip." Some authors place the species in the genus Artogeia.
- Description: Chalky white wings of the butterfly are tipped with black above. The male has a single black spot on the forewing: the female, two. The tip of the forewing and the hindwing beneath are uniformly shaded with palebyellow or yellow-green.
- Size: 1.5 - 2 inches
- Ranges widely in Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. It has also been introduced to Australia.
- One of the best-known amd most widely distributed of all North America lepidoptera, the cabbage white in an immigrant to this continent.
- A few specimens were collected near Quebec, Canada, in 1860. Brown and Heineman suggests the species was probably introduced shortly before that on cabbages included among the food stores of a ship arriving from Europe.
By 188, it had spread westward to the plains, and southward to northern Florida. In few more years, it had crossed the grasslands and mountains to colonize Montana and Colorado. There is some evidence that it may also have been introduced on the West Coast at about the same time.
- Now the cabbage white blankets most of the continent, from central Canada to the Southern states. It remains largely absent, however, from the southern portions of Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.
- As its name implies, the cabbage white includes the cabbage among its larva food plants. However, its voracious caterpillars feed on almost any wild or cultivated member of the mustard family and can become pests in crops of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, radishes turnips, and collrds. Plants in the caper family nasturtiums are also widely used.
- There are two or three broods in the northern portions of the range, as many as seven or eight in the South. 
- The cabbage white flies almost through-out the year in warm climates.
- The female may live up to three weeks and lay as many as seven hundred eggs before she dies. The peak in egg production occurs about one week after she emerges from the chrysalis 
- Eggs are laid singly on the host leaves, and tests shoe that the femalebseeks out plants in vigorous growth, with succulent leaves and abundent protein for the developing young. 
- The pungentbmustard oils provide the stimuls for egg laying and feeding, and the caterpillars in the laboratory have eaten filter paper and other substances soaked in these strong oils.
- The larvae are green or bluish green with narrow yellow stripes and are covered with short hairs.
- Cabbage whites inhabit open areas, include weedy fields, roadsides, and urban or suburban gardens, visiting a variety of flowers for nectar.
- Although their flight appeares slow and erratic, they sometimes travel many miles, espicially when assisted by strong wings. 
- A tiny braconid wasp is one of the major parasites of the caterpillars and helps keep populations of the caterpillars in check.

Butterfly Species Fun Fact: Cabbage White