In the last post I showed the dark blue pansy, Junonia oenone oenone. Here I am showing another Junonia species, J. natalica natalica, the Natal pansy or brown pansy. As with all Junonia, it belongs to the family Nymphalidae, the largest family of butterflies. It occurs throughout Afrotropical areas. In southern Africa is found in coastal and riverine forests and dense savannas, where it flies low and slow through open areas and stops often with its wings opening and closing. This makes it fairly easy to creep up on and photograph, with emphasis on creep as it is easily flushed.

Adults fly year round, with numbers peaking in spring and summer. In South Africa, Brown Pansies occur in Kwazulu-Natal (from where it gets its species and subspecies name) and into the Lowveld and escarpment of Mpumalanga and Limpopo (where I took these photographs).

Larvae of this species feed on Asystasia gangetica, creeping foxglove or just asystasia in South africa, and Phaulopsis imbricata, known as Himalayan ruellia. Aside from this species, the latter plant is a larval host for a wide range of butterflies including great eggfly, tiny grass blue, soldier pansy and marbled elf.