Prompted by a post on Twitter by Butterfly Conservation’s Head of Science Richard Fox, I spent some of last Monday’s walk checking for mines on the leaves of Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea), a plant I tend to ignore when leaf bothering. I got lucky, finding several mines when checking the first Dogwood I came across.

There are two leafminers that make very similar mines so it’s important to check the larvae if they’re still present. If the larvae have dark spots along the centre of their bodies, they are Antispila petryi (a little moth that’s also known as the Dogwood cutter); if there are no spots, they are Antispila metallela (Shining dogwood cutter). As you can see, the larvae I found have spots, so are the former.

When they are fully grown, the larvae cut out an oval from the leaf to make themselves a case and drop to the ground to pupate, hence the holes shown in my photos. The mines can be found from August to October.

When I checked the Welsh biodiversity records database, I found that there were very few Welsh records, and none in my area. However, a few days later I found more mines in another location so it seems that, like many other leafminers, this species is under-recorded. I’m now on the look out for the other species, Antispila metallela.