Cyclophora punctaria
species of insect
Cyclophora punctaria, the maiden's blush, is a moth of the family Geometridae. The species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae. The species is mainly prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe. In the north, its distribution extends to southern Fennoscandia and the British Isles, in the west via France to parts of northern Spain, in the south via Italy, the Balkan Peninsula (with the exception of Greece) to Asia Minor. The eastern border of the distribution is roughly the Ural. In the Caucasus area, the nominate subspecies is replaced by the subspecies C. punctaria fritzae. The range of this subspecies extends as far as Iran.Cyclophora punctaria is found mainly in wooded areas with oak scrub and oak forests. In Central Europe it rises up to 700 metres in the hills, rarely up to 1,200 metres in the Alps, and regularly rises to 1,300 metres in southern Europe.
Description
The wingspan is 13–25 mm for the first generation; the second generation is typically much smaller and reaches only about 22 mm. The forewings have a sand ground colour, or may have reddish or yellowish tints.
“Cyclophora punctaria” enters the record as species of insect. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cyclophora, punctaria and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Cyclophora punctaria” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cyclophora, punctaria and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1509698. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1758.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cyclophora punctaria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.