''Callophrys hesseli'', or Hessel's hairstreak, is a

butterfly Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprises ...

of the family

Lycaenidae Lycaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies (behind Nymphalidae, brush-footed butterflies), with over 6,000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterfly ...

. It ranges from southern Maine south along the Atlantic coastal plain to northern Florida on the Gulf Coast. The species was first described (as ''Mitoura hesseli'') by George W. Rawson and J. Benjamin Ziegler in 1950, in honor of the lepidopterist Sidney Adolphus Hessel. It is listed as endangered in

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

by state authorities. The

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan ...

is 25–28 mm. Adults are on wing in one generation in late May in New England, but there are two generations with adults on wing from April to July in the south. The caterpillars feed on Atlantic white-cedar (''

Chamaecyparis thyoides ''Chamaecyparis thyoides'' (Atlantic white cedar, Atlantic white cypress, southern white cedar, whitecedar, or false-cypress), a species of ''Cupressaceae'', is native to the Atlantic coast of North America and is found from southern Maine to ...

'') and adults consume nectar from flowers including swamp milkweed,

shadbush ''Amelanchier'' ( ), also known as shadbush, shadwood or shadblow, serviceberry or sarvisberry (or just sarvis), juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum, wild-plum or chuckley pear,A Digital Flora of Newfoundland and Labrador Vascular Plants/ref> is a g ...

, sand myrtle, sweet pepperbush,

highbush blueberry Blueberries are a widely distributed and widespread group of perennial flowering plants with blue or purple berries. They are classified in the section ''Cyanococcus'' within the genus ''Vaccinium''. ''Vaccinium'' also includes cranberries, b ...

, buttonbush, and

dogbane Dogbane, dog- bane, dog's bane, and other variations, some of them regional and some transient, are names for certain plants that are reputed to kill or repel dogs; " bane" originally meant "slayer", and was later applied to plants to indicate t ...

Subspecies

*''Callophrys hesseli hesseli'' *''Callophrys hesseli angulata'' (Gatrelle, 2001) (South Carolina)

References

hesseli Butterflies of North America Butterflies described in 1950 {{Eumaeini-stub