There are several closely related butterflies which are called ladies: painted ladies, American ladies, and west coast ladies. They all belong to the genus named Vanessa.1
Of the three, I see painted ladies the most frequently.
I love looking at their underwings, largely because of their beautiful circular eyespots. Folks who know a lot more than I do speculate that their eyespots may fool predators into thinking the butterfly is looking directly at them.
I see American ladies much less frequently — usually just two or three times each summer. They have only two eyespots on their lower underwings but those “eyes” are quite spectacular.
American ladies are smaller than painted ladies and don’t have as much white on their wings.
The photo below is of a west coast lady. I took it in July of 2017 on a magical day when the photo gods smiled upon me and then smiled some more.2 I’d always thought this butterfly was an American lady but, when I began writing this email and looking at other photos, I realized there were a couple of clear differences between the west coast and American ladies.
One is the differing pattern on the upper wings; particularly noticeable is the orange along the outside edges of the west coast lady’s upper wings. Another is the black scallop above the blue circles on the lower wings of the west coast lady.
I think that one magical day in 2017 was the only time I’ve ever seen a west coast lady.
There’s a fourth North American butterfly in the Vanessa genus; it’s called a red admiral.
I also saw and photographed a clearwing moth that day. Just like the west coast lady, it was the first and only time I’ve seen one.
I really like the way you draw the distinctions in your text. The visual differences are quite clear and they are so beautiful.