Food Plant: Echium vulgare (Vipers Bugloss) Elsewhere: Anchusa strigosa (Strigose Bugloss); Borago officinalis (Borage); Cynoglossum clandestinum; C. creticum (Blue Hound's-tongue); C. officinale (Common Hound's-tongue); Echium aculeatum (White Bugloss), E.candicans (Pride of Madeira), E.fastuosum (Pride of Madeira), E.giganteum, E.italicum (Italian Viper's Bugloss); E.lusitanicum (Borage); E.nervosum, E.plantagineum (Purple Viper's Bugloss), E.spinosum; Myosotis macrocalycina ; Symphytum sp.

Mine: September (possibly bivoltine)

Notes: Initially forms a narrow twisting gallery which then forms an elongated blotch mine by the midrib, with a wrinkled surface, which may absorb this early gallery. The mine is usually lower surface and inconspicuous if viewed from above (Langdon, 2023). A well-grown larva exposed in a mine on Echium vulgare. Older larvae in the grazing phase develop a black head, and eventually a weakly-marked black prothoracic plate. The early galleries and blotches turn brown on ageing. There may be more than one mine in a leaf and these may merge into one blotch. Pupation is within the mine in a silken cocoon. First recorded in the UK in Kent (2004), when a moth was trapped. This is the third British record and the first of the moth being bred (Langdon, 2023). A predominantly Southern European species.

Data: 01.x.2022, Dungeness, Kent, VC15

Image:© Will Langdon