Echium plantagineum, Spain; from Hering (1936b)

mine

Mine lower-surface, starting at a flat, iridescent egg shell, then an undulating epidermal corridor of about 5 cm, that abruptly widens into an elliptic blotch of ca. 5 cm length, which almost fills all space between midrib and leaf margin. The blotch has two levels: the oldest level in the sponge parenchyma, a later level in the middle layer of the palissade parenchyma. A silken cocoon is attached to the roof of the upper floor. Frass in a very thin, continuous pale brown line, in the corridor part clearly coiled, in the blotch resembling an entangled bundle of sewing-thread on the floor or the lower level; in the upper level the frass forms a black mass on the ceiling. In a few cases the palissade parenchyma of the upper floor was eaten away as far as the epidermis, and only in these cases the mine was visible from above.

Upon emergence the pupa remains in the cocoon, contrary to Dialectica scalariella where, as in almost all Gracillariidae, the pupa works itself halfway out of the mine before the moth comes out.

host plants

Boraginaceae, oligophagous

Echium decaisnei, lusitanicum, plantagineum; Podonosma orientalis; Symphytum.

phenology

Larvae from March on (Hering, 1957a).

distribution within Europe

Iberian Peninsula, Sardinia, Sicily, Greece (Fauna Europaea, 2009).

pupa

Described by Patočka (1999a), Patočka & Turčáni (2005a).

synonyms

Mendesia echiella; M. symphytella (Walsingham, 1907) [Kaila (1999a)].

references

Amsel & Hering (1931a); Hering (1957a), Kaila (1999a), Klimesch (1990a), Nel & Nel (2000a), Parenti & Varalda (1994a); Patočka (1999a), Patočka Turčáni (2005a).