Checking the leaves on our apple tree this morning, I found a leaf-edge fold which I thought might be an old vacated mine of Callisto denticulella so I opened it and was surprised to find it tenanted. There was a fully-grown Parornix larva inside which on apple can only be Parornix scoticella. Although common it is a species which has not been recorded here before. It is also perhaps a little bit late to be at this stage because Emmet's Guide to the Smaller British Lepidoptera gives August-September for second brood larvae, but that publication does date from the 1970s.
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| Parornix scoticella, Westcott 15th October |
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| Parornix scoticella, Westcott 15th October |
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Edit: 24 hours later the Parornix larva had managed to almost completely re-seal the leaf-edge fold with silk, something I hadn't expected it to be capable of.
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| Parornix scoticella, Westcott 16th October |
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Having done some leaf-mining with Peter Hall in Herefordshire a couple of days ago and found some active mines of Stigmella tiliae there, I gave our lime tree another once over today but managed to find just the one vacated mine of that species (I've not yet managed to find a tenanted mine in Bucks). It is shown below with a "bonus mine" of Bucculatrix thoracella on the same leaf.
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| Mines of Stigmella tiliae (top) and Bucculatrix thoracella (bottom), Westcott 15th October |
Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks
Prompted by your post I checked my records and found that I have recorded 10 P. scoticella as adults in the garden over the last 3 years (1,2 and 7). As it is classed as 'Common' I had never really looked any further but now looking at the county records that I have access to it seems that there are 162 records for Warwickshire but only 3 for Berkshire to 2019. I wonder what it's distribution is nationally.
ReplyDeleteHi Andy,
ReplyDeleteThere are around 40 confirmed records for Bucks, 27 of which are of dissected adults and the remainder as leaf-mines on Apple, Rowan, Whitebeam & Wild Service Tree. One of the mines on Apple was reared by Andy King and the resulting adult was also dissected. So a reasonable number of records for the county but it is bound to be under-recorded everywhere because of the need for dissection and the limited number of people interested in leaf-mining! However, John Langmaid's map (see the link to "Micro-moth Distribution Maps" on the right-hand column of this page) shows that it has been found in almost every vice-county in the UK so I'm sure it does deserve to be classed as "common".
Thank you for your reply. All of my records are of dissected males. As I run my trap under the edge of an apple tree canopy it is probably not surprising that I am recording a fair number.
ReplyDelete