Isn’t this a lovely looking little creature? Meet the fruit fly, Xyphosia miliaria, which seems to have a couple of common names: Mottled thistle fly (presumably because of its patterned wings) and Orange thistle picturewing. The adult flies can be seen on or around thistles any time from May through to September. Like Urophora cardui (see More galls, part 2, October 2017) and Urophora stylata (Urophora stylata gall flies, only recently published, on 2 July), Xyphosia miliaria causes galls to form on its host plant, though this little fly pierces and lays its eggs within the plant’s flower head not its stems. Also, unlike the Urophora species, which specialise in a single thistle species, this little fruit fly isn’t fussy about which thistle species it uses as a larval host.