Leafmines: Coleophora lineolea

22 Monday Sep 2025

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case-bearing moth larvae, Coleophora lineolea, Coleophora on Hedge woundwort, Coleophora species, leaf-mining moth larvae, leaf-mining moths

When I spotted the spiders I blogged about on Saturday (Spiders: Metellina segmentata), they were spinning their webs on two adjacent plants of Hedge woundwort (Stachys sylvatica) (I was actually looking for Woundwort shieldbugs, which I haven’t seen this year). In the process of photographing those spiders, I spotted some leafmines, something I’d not seen previously on these particular plants.

Noticing what looked like tiny holes in the blotch mines, I suspected the miners must be a species of Coleophora moth and, sure enough, when I turned the leaves over, I found two of the little cases that Coleophora larvae construct to shelter in. There is only one Coleophora moth species whose larvae eat Hedge woundwort so, for once, identification was straight forward: these were Coleophora lineolea. The adult moth is a little cracker, a pale orange-and-white striped beauty, a photo of which you can see on the UK Moths website.

As they’re made from the hairy leaves of the woundwort, the tiny larval cases were themselves very hairy, and rather attractive. This moth uses several other larval plant species – Black and White horehound, Lamb’s ear, and a couple of sages – as well as Hedge woundwort, and the mines and cases can be found between September and May, as they overwinter as larvae, snug in their little cases.

Leafmines: Coptotriche marginea

15 Monday Sep 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, leaves, plants

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British leafminers, British moths, Coptotriche marginea, leaf-mining moth larvae, leaf-mining moths, leafmines on Bramble

Today’s leafminer is one of two I found before I went away on my latest little mini break (I’ll feature the second in next Monday’s blog post). These bright white blotches, shown here on Bramble, but also found on other Rubus species, were made by the larvae of the moth Coptotriche marginea. Here’s a link to the UK Moth website’s entry on this moth, if you want to see what the adult looks like.

The female moth lays her egg on the upper side of a leaf, then, when the larva hatches, it chews into the leaf and initially creates a linear, gallery mine (you can see this in the third of my images, below), before the mine widens out to form a blotch. My photos below show the upper and under sides of each leaf.

This species is bivoltine; the first leafmines can be seen during July, while the second brood feed right through the winter months, from September to March. I guess staying inside a leaf is a cosy enough place to spend the winter, as long as your leaf doesn’t wither and die during the colder months.

Reddening Glasswort

14 Sunday Sep 2025

Posted by sconzani in autumn, plants, wildflowers

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autumn colour, Glasswort, reddening plant, RSPB Lodmoor, Salicornia species, saltmarsh plants, seaside plants

You may have noticed, in a couple of yesterday’s Ruff photos – as in the photo below (which includes Lapwings, Starlings, a Cormorant drying its wings, with a Grey heron lurking in the background) – the birds are moving around amongst a reddish-coloured plant.

This is Glasswort, one of the Salicornia species, though I don’t which of several species this might be. For one thing, due to the watery environment in which Glassworts thrive, I couldn’t get close to any of the plants, but also these plants can be tricky to distinguish one from the other. If you see Glasswort and want to give it a try, the Wildflower Society website has a downloadable pdf ‘A Guide to the Identification of the Glassworts of the British Isles’.

The Glassworts are plants of seasides and saltmarshes, and are common all around the British coastline. Until this latest visit to RSPB Lodmoor, I hadn’t particularly noticed these plants but this time, as the season is changing from summer to autumn, the Glassworts begin to change colour, and, I think, look stunning. I’m sure the photographers amongst you will also appreciate what a wonderful backdrop this colour provides for images of the local birds.

Leafmines: Bedellia somnulentella

08 Monday Sep 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, leaves, plants

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Bedellia somnulentella, Bedellia somnulentella larva, Bedellia somnulentella pupa, British leafminers, British moths, leaf-mining moth larvae, leaf-mining moths, leafmines on Field bindweed

I’m particularly pleased to share this new leafminer as it’s not often that I find the signs of the mine, a larva within said mine, larvae resting outside their mines, and also a pupa, but here they are. These were found during two walks around the edge of a local recreation ground with, perhaps surprisingly, the pupa being seen on 9 August, a couple of weeks before I found the larvae (on 27 August) on plants that were a couple of hundred metres from the initial find site.

These mines are the work of the larvae of the moth Bedellia somnulentella, the adult of which is something of a ‘little brown job’, as you can see on the UK Moths website. The larval plants include both Field bindweed (as shown here) and Hedge bindweed, as well as Morning glory, and, though the mine begins as a gallery, this appears to be subsumed by the later blotch, as blotches were all I noticed.

These larvae have some interesting habits: they weave silken threads below their mines to create resting places outside their mines (an unusual habit). The threads would not be easy to spot, except for the fact that the larvae’s frass is also caught by them and so appears as scattered clumps and strings of pooh.

When they’ve finished feeding and their development is complete, the larvae exit their blotches and pupate suspended amongst their silken threads. They’re fascinating little creatures.

Soapwort and smut

24 Sunday Aug 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, fungi, plants, wildflowers

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anther smut, anther smut on Soapwort, archaeophyte, British wildflowers, fungus on Soapwort flowers, Microbotryum saponariae, Saponaria officinalis, Soapwort

During a walk around Cardiff’s Bute Park last week, I spotted a wildflower growing alongside my path that I couldn’t ever recall seeing before. It had pink flowers and looked a lot like Red campion so I wondered if it might be a cultivated variety of campion that had escaped from someone’s garden.

A look through the appropriate section of my wildflower guide when I got home proved me half right and half wrong. It was definitely a member of the campion family but this was Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), no garden escape but not native either. It’s classified as an archaeophyte, which means this extremely useful detergent-plant was introduced to Britain in ancient times, prior to 1500 AD.

A few snippets from Flora Britannica:

Simply rubbing a leaf between the fingers will produce a slight, slippery froth. Boiled in water, the plant produces a green lather with the power to lift grease and dirt, especially from fabrics. … due to the presence of saponins – chemicals which, like inorganic soaps, appear to ‘lubricate’ and absorb dirt particles.
… cultivated for laundering woollens in Syria … and in Britain employed as a soaping agent by medieval fullers … because vegetable saponins are so much gentler than soaps, Saponaria has been used much more recently for washing ancient tapestries … Victoria &Albert Museum it was last used for cleaning fragile fabrics in the 1970s. The National Trust have also used it, for bringing up the colours in antique curtains.

Now, the keen-eyed amongst you may have noticed something a little odd about the flowers in some of my photos; the centres of the flower heads look black. This is because many of the plants I found were suffering from anther smut, in this case caused by the fungus Microbotryum saponariae. The pollen in the flowers’ anthers has been replaced with fungal spores, meaning the plant is unable to reproduce. This may be a recent infestation as I found plenty of plants growing along the path as I walked further. I often see something similar on Red campion flowers, though that is caused by a different fungal species, Microbotryum silenes-dioicae. So, two for the price of one today: a fascinating plant and an equally fascinating fungus.

White melilot

17 Sunday Aug 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, plants, wildflowers

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alien flora, alien plants, British wildflowers, Melilotus albus, White melilot

When I first saw this plant, I thought it was some weird variation on a vetch. I was wrong – I frequently am! – but I did have the correct family. This is White melilot (Melilotus albus), a member of the pea family, the Fabaceae (or Leguminosae).

I’ve only ever seen it growing in this one location, an area of waste ground on the western side of Cardiff Bay, which leads me to wonder how it arrived there. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey writes that it was ‘originally introduced to this country from Europe as fodder plants’ and is ‘now well naturalised at the edges of arable fields, on roadsides and in waste places’. That’s certainly one explanation but I wonder if this particular colony has a different origin.

I know from my time volunteering on the Mary Gilham Archive Project that, in the days of sail and the once very active docks that flourished around the Bay, ships often used sand as ballast. When they arrived at Cardiff, the ships offloaded their sand before loading up with a cargo of coal, and the sand was often dumped or used to reclaim land. That sand contained a huge variety of dormant seeds, which is why the land around Cardiff Bay – and the ports of other cities – often contain alien plant species. Whatever the truth of its arrival, White melilot is an attractive, if straggly little plant, which, I think, deserves to grow more widely.

Coleophora argentula

16 Saturday Aug 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, plants, wildflowers

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case-bearing caterpillar, case-bearing larvae, case-bearing moth larva, Coleophora argentula, moth larvae on Yarrow, Yarrow

These may not look like much – in fact, when looking at these images, you might struggle to see anything but fading flower heads of Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) – but I’ve been checking almost every Yarrow flower I see, looking for these, since I first saw them mentioned on social media a few years ago.

These tiny brown tubes, camouflaged with a plant material covering, are the larval cases of the moth Coleophora argentula. From within their home-made protective covering, the little larvae poke their heads out to munch on the Yarrow flowers and on the seeds when they begin to develop.

According to the British Leafminers website entry on this species, the larvae are usually active from September through to May, so these are a little early; I’m finding many things are early this year, presumably due to the continuing warm weather. You can see the adult moth, a very pretty little thing, with pale brown and white stripes, over on the UK Moths website.

And now, have another look at the first photo. How many of the little brown cases can you find? Answers on a postcard. 🙂

Galls on grapevines

26 Saturday Jul 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, plants

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British galls, Colomerus vitis, gall mites, gall-causing mites, galls, galls on grape leaves, galls on grapevines

After last Sunday’s local meander I wrote on social media:

A lesson for me in the importance of recording: I’ve walked past this grapevine many times recently & noticed the galls on its leaves. Today I finally took photos, figured it’s caused by the mite Colomerus vitis & found there are NO Welsh records, tho’ it must be out there somewhere.

I’ve since checked the only other publicly accessible grapevine I know of locally and found that it, too, has these galls on its leaves so I was right to assume that this is something that has simply been overlooked and not recorded by anyone who’s noticed it. As well as there having been no previous Welsh records, there are very few records from elsewhere in the UK, which I assume is also under-recording, not scarcity.

The galls, which appear as lumps and bumps on the upper side of the leaves, are caused by the miniscule mite Colomerus vitis. These mites inhabit the felt-like surface of the galls on the underside of the leaves, a surface that starts out white but gradually browns over time. The vines I’ve looked at are covered in bunches of grapes and the plants themselves look very healthy so, presumably, the galls are having little affect on the plants’ productivity.

Wild madder

06 Sunday Jul 2025

Posted by sconzani in plants, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, coastal plants, dye plants, plants with spines, Rubia peregrina, Wild madder

With short sharp hooked spines along the edges of its stems and leaves, Wild madder (Rubia peregrina) is one vicious-looking plant. You wouldn’t want to fall into a patch of it or mistakenly grab a stem for support if you lost your footing on one of the rocky slopes it likes to scramble over. Fortunately, my local plant was confined behind a metal fence though, even there, it was almost smothering the other scrub and was reaching its nasty tendrils through the railings as if to grab its next potential victim.

This is a coastal plant, found mainly in the south and west of Britain so along England’s southern coastline, right around the Welsh coast, and around Ireland’s southern coastline. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey writes that Wild madder is related ‘to the dye plant, madder, R. tinctorum, and its roots have been used to give a pink tone by English dyers’.

Urophora stylata gall flies

02 Wednesday Jul 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, plants

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British gall flies, Bulb thistle gall fly, Cirsium vulgare, gall fly on Spear thistle, Spear thistle, thistle gall flies, Urophora stylata

I was having a mooch around an area of rough ground on the edge of some local recreation grounds when I spotted a healthy and robust-looking Spear thistle, so wandered over for a closer look as thistles often provide a home for interesting insects. And I was in luck for there, on top of the first flower I peered at, was this handsome little gall fly, Urophora stylata.

This was my first sighting of this species but, fortunately for me, the Urophora gall flies have quite distinctive patterns on their wings and they each have a preference for a particular species of thistle. Unfortunately for some of you, this gall fly is mostly seen in southern Britain but, according to my internet research (see, for example, this guide from the Montana State Government), it is also present in parts of North America, where it was introduced as a biological control for the Spear thistle, which has been classified as an invasive species in some locations.

After mating, as per my voyeuristic photo above, the female fly lays her eggs, as shown below, after inserting her sturdy ovipositor into the flower heads of the Spear thistle (Cirsium vulgare). The actions of the subsequent larvae cause woody galls to grow within the flower head. The Naturespot website says that these galls are not obvious to the naked eye but ‘can be felt as hard lumps by squeezing dead flower heads’. How to explain that to a passing stranger who politely asks what you’re doing?