monarch butterfly

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A large butterfly (Danaus plexippus) chiefly of North America, having light orange-brown wings with black veins and white-spotted black borders and noted for its long-distance migrations and its brightly colored caterpillars, which feed on milkweed plants.

from The Century Dictionary.

• See butterfly.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Zoöl.) A very large red and black butterfly (Danais Plexippus) having striking orange-brown wings with black veins in a reticulated pattern; -- called also milkweed butterfly and monarch. Its larvae feed on the leaves of the milkweed.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun large migratory American butterfly having deep orange wings with black and white markings; the larvae feed on milkweed