Purple thorn
The purple thorn is a dark purplish brown moth with jagged, angled wing edges. Each wing has a little white mark shaped like a comma. Its spring moths are bigger than its summer moths.
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Fun facts
The spring moths fly in April and May. The summer moths fly in July and August and are smaller and darker.
It flies at night and is drawn to lights.
It spends the winter as a pupa.
It lives in Britain but not in Ireland.
Most asked questions about Purple thorn
?What does the purple thorn eat?
Its caterpillars eat leaves of trees and bushes like birch, oak, apple and rose.
?How big is the purple thorn?
Spring moths have a wingspan of 46 to 52 millimetres, summer moths 44 to 46 millimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Selenia tetralunaria
- Named by
- Hufnagel, 1767
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Geometridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Geometridae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Purple thorn (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 Didier Descouens. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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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