The Prairie Sphinx Moth or Wiest's Primrose Sphinx (Euproserpinus wiesti) is a species of moth in the Sphingidae family. It is found from north-eastern California through central Nevada and most of Utah to north-eastern Arizona and northern three-quarters of New Mexico and most of Colorado, and further eastward into extreme western portions of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The habitat consists of sand washes and prairie blow-outs.
The wingspan is 32-49 mm.
There is one generation per year with adults on wing from May to June. Adults nectar at flowers during the day.
Larvae have been recorded feeding on Oenothera latifolia.
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“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
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A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw,
A Buddha, hand at rest,
Hand lifted up that blest;
And right between these two a girl at play
That, it may be, had danced her life away....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)