Friday 3 July 2015

A hint of blue, hooray


I was very pleased to find this delightful Carpet moth on the trap's transparent cowl, a nice change from the pretty but commonplace Garden and Common Carpets, and even the Silver Ground which is lovely but, to me, rather familiar now.

I am pretty sure that this is a Galium Carpet, named after the Gallium plants or Bedstraws on which its caterpillars like to guzzle. It has a good choice in the UK: Lady's, Heath and Hedge; a three-course meal for any Galium caterpillar lucky enough to be brought up within a crawl of all of them.

I have talked recently about the lack of blue in moths but the Galium is one which has a touch of it - very subtle but nonetheless there in that lovely, jaggedy band across its wings. I will try to introduce it to my granddaughter next time we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Update: my wise commentor on this post is, however, correct. This is a Large Twin-spot Carpet, confirmed by Peter Hall on the Upper Thames Moths blog. So I will have to content myself with telling the GD about that, instead.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Martin

As always, enjoying the blog, especially liked the jigsaw pyjamas idea a few posts ago.

Despite the much clearer blue on this one making it look very much Galium and despite me spending a good while considering Balsam, i'm not sure, but I think it's maybe a Large Twin-spot Carpet like your one from 13th June.

MartinWainwright said...

Hiya and many thanks once more. That's a very interesting thought. I will compare and puzzle - and prob send it off for a verdict from the UTB professors

all v best as ever

M