After being prompted by a post on Twitter/X by British Leafminers man Rob, I started searching for this moth, Coleophora trifolii, a couple of weeks ago. At that stage, Rob said you could pick out the moth larva’s presence by looking at the seeds of Melilot, where he’d found ‘Two seed cases (blackened) fused together whilst the larva inside feeds on the third seed (still green)’. Looking for those proved much more tricky than I expected as the seeds are tiny and, as the plants die off, the seeds seem naturally to go black. So, I failed to find my target.

Then, a few days ago, Rob posted again, noting the formation of the little cases the moth larva moves in to while it continues to feed within the Melilot seeds and later to pupate within. And these cases have proved much easier to spot. In fact, I found at least 15, probably more, in one clump of plants where the adult moth must have laid a lot of eggs all at once. There were so many cases that I’ve actually brought a couple home to see what emerges – I don’t usually like to do that but, in this case, there were so many that I didn’t think I would be interfering too much and I’ll return any adults that appear back to the area. And I’ll share photos of them in another post if they emerge successfully.