Grove snail
The grove snail is one of the most common big snails in Europe. Its shell can be yellow, pink or brown, with up to five dark stripes. Almost every grown-up grove snail has a dark brown edge around the opening of its shell, like lipstick.
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Fun facts
No two shells are quite the same. Some have no stripes at all, others have one, two, three, four or five.
Snails in shady woods often have darker shells, while snails in sunny places have paler ones that do not get so hot.
Song thrushes learn to look for the most common shell colour, so snails with rare colours are more likely to stay safe.
Scientists and families take part in projects where they count the stripes and colours of grove snails.
It has spread along the Baltic Sea coast and now lives in Estonia too.
Most asked questions about Grove snail
?How can you tell a grove snail from a white-lipped snail?
Look at the edge of the shell opening. The grove snail usually has a dark brown lip, its cousin has a white one.
?How big is a grove snail?
Its shell is about 18 to 25 millimetres wide.
?Why do grove snails have different colours?
Different colours help in different places, and birds have a harder time finding the rare ones.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cepaea nemoralis
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Snails, slugs and worms
- Family
- Helicidae
- Classification
- Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Helicidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America
- Also known as
- Brown-lipped snail, Lemon snail
Where the facts come from
- Cepaea nemoralis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Cepaea_nemoralis_(Mad_Max).jpg : Mad Max derivative work: Papa Lima Whiskey 2. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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