Here at Butterfly Ridge we have had several special moths show up over the years. Pictured above is a recently discovered specialty.

The above photo was taken on September 15, 2016 and myself and another, very knowledgeable mothing friend had identified it as Labrador Carpet Moth. LCM, while not extremely rare, is not especially common either. So we always considered it a good find.

Moth expert Chris Schmidt was taking a look at this same photo on iNaturalist recently and decided that it is in fact Xanthorhae packardata, a species which lacks a common name. For this article, we will refer to it as Packard’s Carpet Moth. And it turns out that PCM is quite rare, especially in Ohio. In fact, there are only two known locations for PCM in Ohio, Butterfly Ridge and near Burr Oak State Park.

In the years since 2016 we have had no other sightings of PCM. Of course, that does not mean they are not still around. The host plant for PCM is unknown, but is assumed to be the same as the closely related LCM, who’s host plants are many. Who knows, maybe 2021 will be the year for our second PCM sighting! And you could be there for the big event. Our public mothing events will be every Saturday night (except the first Saturday of the month) from June thru August.