| Spring Azure | |
|---|---|
| Male, Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park, Washington | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Lepidoptera |
| Family: | Lycaenidae |
| Genus: | Celastrina |
| Species: | C. ladon |
| Binomial name | |
| Celastrina ladon (Cramer, 1780) |
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| Subspecies[1] | |
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The Spring Azure (Celastrina ladon) is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family. It is found in North America from Alaska and Canada south of the tundra through most of the United States except the Texas coast, southern plain and peninsular Florida; south in the mountains to Colombia.
Since the publication of a monograph on the Lycaenopsis Group of Lycaenid genera in 1983 by Eliot & Kawazoe,[2] ladon has been considered by some taxon authorities to be a subspecies of Celastrina argiolus (Linnaeus, 1758). Other authorities still consider C. ladon and related species C. neglecta and C. serotina, to be "full" species.[3][4][5][6][7]