Often confused with the Small White, the Green-veined White is best told apart by the dark scales tracing along its wing veins, which give a greyish-green, veined appearance on the underside (most visible when the wings are closed). The upperside is creamy white with grey-black wingtips and, in females, one or two black spots. It’s a butterfly of damper habitats than its white relatives — hedgerows, woodland rides, riverbanks, and damp meadows — and rarely strays into vegetable gardens, since it avoids cultivated brassicas. Its foodplants are wild crucifers such as garlic mustard, cuckooflower, and hedge mustard.

The pale green, downy caterpillars feed unobtrusively on the leaves of these wild mustard-family plants rather than cultivated cabbages, which is why it causes no real harm to gardeners’ crops. Eggs are laid singly on the underside of leaves, and there are usually two generations a year in the UK, sometimes a partial third in warmer areas, with the species overwintering as a chrysalis attached to plant stems or other secluded structures.