Bedellia somnulentella revisited

20 Monday Oct 2025

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

Back in September, in my blog Leafmines: Bedellia somnulentella, I covered the mines of a moth whose larvae have some unusual habits, spinning hammocks outside their mines to rest and pupate in. Now that I’m aware of them, I’ve been seeing these mines almost everywhere I see Field bindweed. And, during last Tuesday’s walk, when I saw the plant and turned over a few leaves, I spotted two leaves that had a total of three pupae suspended beneath. I decided to bring them home so that I could, hopefully, see what the adult moth looked like.

In the intervening six days, another larva has pupated – I hadn’t even realised there was another larva in the leaves but, on Thursday, as the leaves began to dry and shrivel, it appeared, climbed up the side of the jar, spun a hammock under the lid, and pupated.

Then, yesterday, when the wild, wet, windy weather meant I spent a day at home – a rarity for me, two of the adult moths hatched from their pupae. I couldn’t get any decent images through the glass so decided to risk opening the jar to grab a few quick photos.

And today I released them into the wild. All going well, there should be two more moths to come.

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.