Food Plant: Echium vulgare (Viper's Bugloss)

Mine: August-June

Notes: Feeds in leaf bases and the lower parts of the stem and this causes them to wither. Pupates on dead basal leaves in a hard cocoon covered with leaf fragments. Very local and confined to some southern coasts. Initial mines on Echium vulgare. These are brownish, and even with strong back-lighting, it is very difficult to see the larva within.

National Status: Nationally Scarce A

Bradley No: 1359

Data: 29.ix.2022, Dungeness, Kent, VC15

Image:© Will Langdon