Food Plant: Clinopodium vulgare (Wild Basil)

Egg: underside of the leaf near the midrib

Mine: September-May; July-August

Notes: Initially makes a thin brown gallery with central frass which runs to the leaf apex and then turns back on itself (as shown). The mine then becomes a full depth blotch, which may occupy the whole leaf. The larvae may swap leaves as they feed in the blotch mine phase. Pupation is in a white cocoon in debris on the underside of a curled leaf. A species found on the edge of calcareous woods where its foodplant occurs.

National Status: Nationally Scarce B

Bradley No: 592

Data: 20.viii.2014, Badbury Rings, Dorset. VC 9

Image:© Jenny Seawright