Tansy beetle
The tansy beetle is a small, round beetle that shines bright metallic green with a coppery glow, like a little jewel. Its wing cases are covered in tiny dents. It is very rare in Britain, where it lives mainly along one river in York.
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Fun facts
Diggers have found bits of tansy beetles in very old places, which shows they have lived in western Europe since the Stone Age.
In Britain it lives mostly along about 45 kilometres of the River Ouse around York.
It looks a lot like the much more common mint beetle, so people sometimes mix them up.
In Russia it even lives far north in the cold tundra.
Most asked questions about Tansy beetle
?Why is it called the tansy beetle?
Because its main food is tansy, a plant with yellow button flowers.
?Is the tansy beetle rare?
Yes. It is nationally rare in Britain and getting rarer in many other countries too.
?How big is a tansy beetle?
It is about 8 to 10 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Chrysolina graminis
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Chrysomelidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Chrysomelidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Tansy beetle (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 Zakhx150. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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