page_title: Celtis
section_title: Lepidoptera
hierarchical_section_title: Celtis / Uses and ecology / Lepidoptera
caption_attribution_description: Libythea lepita
context_page_description: Celtis is a genus of about 60–70 species of deciduous trees, commonly known as hackberries or nettle trees, widespread in warm temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, in southern Europe, southern and eastern Asia, and southern and central North America, south to central Africa, and northern and central South America. The genus is present in the fossil record at least since the Miocene of Europe, and Paleocene of North America and eastern Asia.
  Previously included either in the elm family or a separate family, Celtidaceae, the APG III system places Celtis in an expanded hemp family. The generic name originated in Latin and was applied by Pliny the Elder to the unrelated Ziziphus lotus.
context_section_description: Celtis species are used as food plants by the caterpillars of certain Lepidoptera. These include mainly brush-footed butterflies, most importantly the distinct genus Libythea (beak butterflies) and some Apaturinae (emperor butterflies):
   
  Acytolepis puspa – common hedge blue, recorded on Chinese hackberry (C. sinensis)
  Automeris io – Io moth, recorded on southern hackberry (C. laevigata)
  Asterocampa celtis – hackberry butterfly or hackberry emperor
  Libythea celtis – European beak
  Libythea labdaca – African beak
  Libythea lepita – common beak
  Libythea myrrha – club beak, recorded on C. tetrandra
  Libytheana carinenta – American snout or common snout butterfly
  Nymphalis xanthomelas – scarce tortoiseshell, recorded on European hackberry (C. australis)
  Sasakia charonda – great purple emperor, recorded on C. jessoensis and C. japonica
  A putative new taxon of the two-barred flasher (Astraptes fulgerator) cryptic species complex, provisionally called "CELT," has hitherto only been found on C. iguanaea.
caption: Common beak (Libythea lepita) caterpillars feed on Celtis in Asia
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