The Geranium Plume Moth (Amblyptilia pica) is a moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 of the Pterophoridae family. It is found in western North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 from Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, inland to Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

 and Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

. It is also found in the north-eastern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

.

The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is 18-23 mm. Adults have dark grey forewings mottled with black. They are on wing in spring and fall and have been recorded feeding on the flower nectar of Salix species.

The larvae feed on Scrophulariaceae

Scrophulariaceae

Scrophulariaceae, the figwort family, are a family of flowering plants. The plants are annual or perennial herbs with flowers with bilateral or rarely radial symmetry. Members of the Scrophulariaceae have a cosmopolitan distribution, with the majority found in temperate areas, including...

, Geraniaceae

Geraniaceae

Geraniaceae is a family of flowering plants placed in the order Geraniales. The family name is derived from the genus Geranium. It includes both the genus Geranium and the garden plants called geraniums, which modern botany classifies as genus Pelargonium, along with other related genera.There are...

, Primulaceae

Primulaceae

Primulaceae is a family of flowering plants with about 24 genera, including some favorite garden plants and wildflowers. It is also known as the primrose family.- Genera :...

, Labiatae and Caprifoliaceae

Caprifoliaceae

The Caprifoliaceae or honeysuckle family is a clade consisting of about 800 dicotyledonous flowering plants, with a nearly cosmopolitan distribution; centres of diversity are found in eastern North America and eastern Asia, while they are absent in tropical and southern Africa.They are mostly...

 species, including Castilleja

Castilleja

Castilleja, commonly known as Indian paintbrush or Prairie-fire, is a genus of about 200 species of annual and perennial herbaceous plants native to the west of the Americas from Alaska south to the Andes, northern Asia, and one species as far west as the Kola Peninsula in Siberia...

species, Pedicularis furbishiae

Pedicularis furbishiae

Furbish's lousewort is a perennial herb found only on the shores of the upper St. John River in Maine and New Brunswick. Furbish's lousewort was first recognized as a new species by Maine naturalist and botanical artist Kate Furbish in 1880...

and Scrophularia californica

Scrophularia californica

Scrophularia californica is a flowering plant in the figwort family which is known by the common names California figwort and California bee plant....

, Penstemon whippleanus. They feed externally on the foliage and flower buds of their host plant, but also bore into the seedpods and mine

Leaf miner

Leaf miner is a term used to describe the larvae of many different species of insect which live in and eat the leaf tissue of plants. The vast majority of leaf-mining insects are moths , sawflies and flies , though some beetles and wasps also exhibit this behavior.Like Woodboring beetles, leaf...

the leaves. The species overwinters as an adult.

Taxonomy

A number of subspecies has been described, but it is unclear which, if any, are still valid:

• Amblyptilia pica pica
• Amblyptilia pica calisequoiae (Lange, 1950)
• Amblyptilia pica marina (Lange, 1950)
• Amblyptilia pica sierrae (Lange, 1950)
• Amblyptilia pica monticola (Grinnell, 1908)
• Amblyptilia pica crataea (Fletcher, 1940)