Ottawa (Dunrobin), ON Canada

4 August 2004   (date of moth capture)  (top left)
4 August 2004   9:45PM EST  (top right)
4 August 2004   (date of moth capture)  (center left and right)
20 July 2002   9:02PM EST  (bottom left)
4 August 2004   (date of moth capture)  (bottom right)
All photos are of the same specimen except for the photo at bottom left.

Schinia florida, also known as the Evening Primrose Moth, is one of five species of Schinia recorded from the Ottawa area (J.D. Lafontaine, pers. comm., 2001), two of which I have photographed at my location. Members of the genus Schinia are often termed the Flower Moths, for their habit of resting, feeding and laying eggs on the flowers of their food plants (Covell, 1984).  This pink and yellow beauty will always be somewhat special to me, because of discovering one at our outside house lights the first summer after we built our house and moved to the country in 1984.  I had never expected to see such an exotic creature as a pink and yellow moth here, and consequently captured it and took it to the Experimental Farm in Ottawa for identification.  The next step was to add another field guide to our reference shelf, in the form of the then-newly published Peterson Field Guide by Charles Covell, beginning first a habit and then a hobby of observing the moths at our front door.

The forewing of Schinia florida is mainly pink, sometimes quite an intense pink, with yellow along the outer margin beyond the subterminal line.  There is also some yellow in the lower basal area, although this is not clearly evident against the yellow thorax in the photos above.  The pink area is somewhat mottled, and the usual lines are not visible.  The orbicular and reniform spots show as darker pink spots, in the much-photographed specimen above with a slight streak of pale yellow behind them.  In some specimens, the pink is more vivid in the vicinity of where the postmedial line would be.  The hindwing is pale yellow.  The "face", legs and the ventral side of the abdomen are also touched with pink.

According to Handfield (1999), the host plant for Schinia florida is evening primrose, which grows wild in open spaces and sometimes along roadsides in my area. Although the moth is nocturnal, it can sometimes be found resting inside the yellow flowers of its host plant during the day. For my general area, Handfield indicates two generations per year, with adult flight seasons from the second half of June to the end of July, and from early August to mid-September.

My records to date for Schinia florida (each date representing "the night of") are in the table below: