🐾 Small Copper

Lycaena phlaeas · wildlife atlas entry

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Lycaena phlaeas , the small copper , American copper , or common copper , is a butterfly of the Lycaenids or gossamer-winged butterfly family. According to Guppy and Shepard (2001), its specific name phlaeas is said to be derived either from the Greek phlego , "to burn up" or from the Latin floreo , "to flourish". Text: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.

Small Copper — reference photo from iNaturalist — (c) scarabaeus_58, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) · cc-by-nc

Record card

Scientific name	Lycaena phlaeas
Rank	species
Community observations	82,231 research-grade records on iNaturalist

Classification

kingdom Animalia › phylum Arthropoda › class Insecta › order Lepidoptera › family Lycaenidae

Seen in the wild — community photographs

Small Copper photograph by the iNaturalist community — 2026-10-24 · Avô, Portugal
(c) Free Palestine, some rights reserved (CC BY) · cc-by

Small Copper photograph by the iNaturalist community — 2026-10-24 · R Mina Grande, Portugal
(c) Vasco Henrique Oliveira Fonseca, some rights reserved (CC BY) · cc-by

Small Copper photograph by the iNaturalist community — 2026-10-24 · Arcade, Soutomaior, Pontevedra, Spain
(c) harmlee, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) · cc-by-nc

Photographs are Creative Commons-licensed observations from iNaturalist, credited as each licence requires. Click any photo for the full research record.

All Small Copper records on iNaturalist → · Encyclopedia entry (Wikipedia) →

Data: iNaturalist open API · stored on this server by the wildlife build so a page request never reaches the network · observations filtered to research grade with photos.

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