Food Plant: Salix repens (Creeping Willow)

Egg: underside of leaf

Mine: June-July; September-October

Notes: A short gallery, almost filled with frass, which usually follows the leaf edge then becomes a blotch, with dispersed frass, and occupying half the leaf. The vacated mines appear black. A rare miner in the UK, restricted to coastal sand dunes in south-east England and Kent. The larva is yellow to brownish yellow. Mines in the field on Salix repens var. argentea.

National Status: pRDB1

Bradley No: 71

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

Image:© Will Langdon

References:
William B. V. Langdon (2024) Stigmella zelleriella (Snellen, 1875) (Lep.: Nepticulidae) discovered at Dungeness, Kent. A second British site The Entomologist's Rec.J. Var 136(1) 8-24
Langmaid JR, Palmer SM & Young MR (2018) A field Guide to the Smaller Moths of Great Briatin and Ireland