Wingspan: 45–55 mm
Flight period of butterflies: in one generation from June to August
Larval food plants: species from grass families (Poaceae)
Velvet blue (Minois dryas) is a large dark brown butterfly, which we will recognize by two large eye-like spots on the upper side of the forewings. These black eye spots have a blue center. Exactly such, equally large eye spots with a blue center, do the female as well as the male have on the underside of the forewings. The female is considerably larger than the male and the eye spots are larger in her than in the male. The largely uniformly brown colored underside of the hindwings in the female is interrupted by a wide whitish belt, which runs roughly down the middle of the wings; the male does not have this belt.
Velvet blue is a meadow species that we encounter both on dry karst meadows and on marshy grasslands. It most often selects somewhat overgrown extensive meadows where it does not graze or mow every year. Adults are wary creatures that quickly sense when we approach and they flee. However they are poor fliers and soon retreat again into tall grasses.
It is widespread throughout Slovenia, but in much of the Alps and in the forested Dinarides it is rare. Velvet blue is a lowland species, seen less and less above 400 m above sea level.
